


Focal Point

by SnowHeart



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Guardian Angels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Tarsus IV
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-02
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 06:11:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 23,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11685708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnowHeart/pseuds/SnowHeart
Summary: "Leonard McCoy dies in the year 2171, and sixty two years later he stands in the rickety shell of an evacuation shuttle."AU where Bones is Jim's guardian angel. And he's got his work cut out just seeing the kid to puberty.





	1. Part 1 - Nebula

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lucy_Claire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucy_Claire/gifts).



> All the thanks in the world to Blackredrose27 for betaing this. Mistakes are my own.

 

_**Part 1  -  Nebula** _

 

 

Leonard McCoy dies in the year 2171, cold and alone, and uselessly wishing he could have done that little bit better by his daughter. It’s not a good way to go, dying with regret. It’s not uncommon though, to have a last wish. A last _prayer_ , Leonard might think, if he wasn’t such a damned cynic.   
(That cynicism won’t come back to haunt him, so much as it was come back to laugh squarely in his face.)   
Leonard McCoy dies in the year 2171, and sixty two years later he stands in the rickety shell of an evacuation shuttle as a woman screams out in pain. For a moment, Leonard thinks he must be here for her. Even with modern medicine being what it is (and hell, does he envy the doctors of today who don’t even know how lucky they are to have all this technology at their fingertips) she wouldn’t be the first woman he's to save from childbirth. He’s halfway to her side, stepping aside with practiced ease as the medics rush past like they don’t even see him (they don’t) when a child is placed in her arms. He’s little more than a wriggling mass of blanket, all except for the eyes that stare out. They’re as blue as the lightning that crackles around the ship, and when they look in Leonard’s direction, they _see_ .   
_Oh_ . Not the mother, then.   
The boy should have died twice before he even has a name. He’s almost four weeks early, and the odds are stacked against him. By all rights, he shouldn’t make it. One day, Leonard will marvel at how the lungs that can scream down an empire can be so small, that the biggest heart he’ll ever know can be so fragile in his hands. But for now, he only works. The sound of an explosion fills the comm, and he carefully doesn’t think about the father who will never be there for his kid. When this is your job (his job? Try his very existence) you soon learn not to get attached. You do what you came to do, and you move on. You never even stop to wonder why the person in front of you deserves to be saved, when so many are left to die. The boy will live (because whatever else he may be, he’s a damned good doctor), and maybe one day, by sheer quirk of fate, Leonard will chance across a newspaper and find out just who this _not-_ _Tiberius-but-Jim_ Kirk has grown up to be.

 

For a long time after he dies, all Leonard knows is the dark. Or maybe it’s a blinding light. He can’t tell, and he can’t bring himself to care. All he knows is, after an impossible length of time, he’s sitting in a diner across from a woman dressed all in white. She smiles warmly at him.  
“Hello, Dr McCoy.”   
Leonard makes a very dignified, very professional noise, which probably sounds something like “Ugh?” It’s not an unreasonable response, all things considered. After several seconds of staring at her without a response, he stares down at himself instead. He’s wearing the simple jeans and leather jacket he last remembers wearing. Except this time, his chest isn’t soaked by a growing stain of crimson. Eventually he looks back up at his companion, who’s helping herself to his fries..   
“What is this?”   
“This? Oh, you’re dead. Please try to keep calm about that.”   
Dead? But… but Jocelyn… She had… and, oh God, _Jo…_   
“I recognise that this might take some adjustment time,” she says, “But unfortunately, time isn’t something you have a great deal of. See that woman over there?” Leonard follows her gaze over his shoulder, to see a waitress with fiery red hair smiling as she pours coffee. “She’s going to inspire her daughter to set up a charity on Cardassia Prime. Unless she dies in the next thirty seconds, that is.”   
“What?” he asks, lunging over the table to grab the woman by the shoulders. No one in the diner so much as glances in their direction. The woman, for her part, just looks unimpressed as he growls “Who the hell are you?”    
“You can call me Chapel.”   
“Chapel? And what? You’re some kind of angel or something? Is that right?”   
“An angel?” She laughs. “No more than you are.”   
Whatever Leonard might have said in response is lost to the sound of a clattering behind them. He turns to see a circle of people gathering in shock and panic around the waitress who has collapsed, contents of her tray scattered across the floor.   
“Myocardial infarction, I’d guess.” Chapel looks almost bored. No, resigned. “Left atrium of the heart. Death of around thirty percent of cardiac tissue already, total heart failure inevitable without immediate treatment. Three minutes to live, if no one can help her.” She fixes him with piercing blue eyes. “So what’s it going to be, McCoy? Are you going to sit here talking to me? Or are you going to get to work?” 

  
Much to his surprise, Leonard doesn’t move on once the kid is stabilised. The shuttle docks into a space station five hours later, and he’s still there. This happens, occasionally. Maybe Jim will relapse tonight, and his help will be needed again. He’s so very tiny, after all. Leonard simply shrugs and follows the small family across the chaos of the hanger.   
He has some idea of the devastation they’ve just lived through. Broadcasts announcing casualty numbers and damage reports have told him that much, not to mention the sound of the exploding ship and an unfinished _I love you_ that still rings in his ears. But hearing and seeing are different things, and Leonard struggles to pull himself together as they make their way through the crowds. Small groups in bright clothes huddle together, and too many flashes of crimson turn out to be something a lot more sinister than red uniform shirts. The sense of loss in the air is tangible, even to him, and Leonard is reminding himself to get it the hell together for the third time in as many minutes, when he notices a familiar face admit the devastation.   
Philip Boyce is… well, he’s been around longer than Leonard, that’s for sure. He has lines around his eyes, age and dry humour equally at fault, and Leonard can’t help but like him. While there isn’t exactly much in the way of downtime or socialising in this line of work, he’s as close with the older angel ( _man_ , dammit Len, older _man_ ) as anyone. Boyce spares only a second to nod in his direction, before turning his attention to the ensign whose chest he’s currently elbows deep in. _Jesus_. His charge is a young man, and Leonard moves on before he has the chance to ask his name, let alone question why one Christopher Pike is worthy of saving.

  
(A bottle of 2032 Bourbon will arrive on Philip Boyce’s doorstep years later. It will have no label, no name nor note of thanks, but he will know where it came from and why none the less.

  
  
Jim ( _Jimmy, what are we going to do, Jimmy?_ his mother whispers into his hair) doesn’t relapse that night. He doesn’t relapse the following day, either, and when they arrive at a ramshackle house in Iowa a week and a half later, Leonard is still by his side. Not that he’s complaining, of course. This is the closest thing to a holiday that he’s had in sixty two years, and there’s something about the child that he can’t help but find endearing. Jimmy stopped seeing him after the first few hours, but that doesn’t mean Leonard can’t run a hand across his forehead and whisper soothing nothings in the darkness until he falls asleep. It’s nice. Peaceful, almost. But all the same, he’s sure there has to be some kind of mistake.   
“There’s no mistake.” Christine informs him, brushing a golden curl from her face. “He’s your charge.”   
They’re not really sitting in an office, just as Leonard isn’t really wearing the leather jacket he died in. But that’s what it looks like, this illusion that manifests whenever he needs to speak to her, so he’s more than happy to think of it as just that. Life is hard enough without gifting yourself extra crazy on top.   
(Crazy? He doesn’t know crazy, not yet.)   
“I know he’s my charge. I’m not an idiot.” Leonard grumbles, putting his feet up on the coffee table with a huff. Christine shoots him an exasperated look and he takes them down again. It’s taken him eighteen years and a particularly gristly war-zone for Leonard to graduate from Chapel to _Christine_ privileges, but she’s never tolerated him making a mess of her not-an-office. “But I’ve already saved his life! The kid’s fine without me now, and I’m more use to you out there. I’m a doctor, not some glorified babysitter!”   
He expects a scolding for his outburst. Instead, Christine only smiles softly. “He needs you.”   
And that’s that. Christine may look every part the angel he refuses to consider himself, from the blonde hair, to the kind eyes, to the name Chapel which sure as hell can’t be real, but there has never been any arguing with her once she makes her mind up.   
He shouldn’t ask, he really shouldn’t, but he can’t help himself. Leonard has one hand on the door-handle that technically doesn’t exist when he says “Who is he? Jim Kirk?”   
He’s certain Christine won’t answer him. There are rules after all. His words are met with silence, and it’s only after Leonard turns to leave that he hears her voice, words barely a whisper.   
“He’s amazing.”

  
  
“Jesus, Bones, you’re amazing!” the almost-man will say, and Leonard will freeze as he is reminded of all he must ensure that Jim Kirk becomes.

  
  
The longest he’s ever had the same charge before Jim is a sixteen year old girl living in what’s left of Johannesburg. The third and final world war that this planet will see (please God, let it be the last one) is raging, and she smuggles messages to the freedom fighters as the bombs fall. Maybe it’s the name of the city, or the fact that, despite her umber skin and intricate braids, she reminds him a little too much of Jo, but he makes the mistake of allowing himself to care. Leonard runs beside her through the rubble for a week and a half, throwing his body over hers as the air explodes around them, and knitting flesh and bone back together as she sleeps. It would be easier if he could knock the phasers out of the soldiers hands before they start shooting, but directly interfering with someone other than your charge has never been allowed, and he pushes her out of harm’s way easily enough instead. She is brave, and she is afraid, and he should have known better than to let her matter.   
She delivers the message that will break the siege, and Leonard leaves her. Two days later she is dead. The world never learns her name, but he never forgets. 

  
So Leonard goes back to Iowa and watches Jimmy Kirk grow up. He spent fifteen days with the girl in Johannesburg, but by the time Winona remarries, Jimmy is four years old. Frank Gorsky smells of cheap beer and a metallic tang (not yet, not to anyone but Leonard), and he stays on earth when Winona runs away to the universe again. Leonard is never sure what broke her first: the questions that her eldest son never seems to stop asking, or the all too familiar eyes of her youngest.   
And maybe Christine’s right, because Leonard has his work cut out for him just in trying to see the kid to puberty. He gently lowers the three year old to the ground when a rotten branch snaps off in his hand. He forces the seven year old’s throat open when it closes around a mouthful of peanut butter, and reprograms any replicator within ten miles of the farmhouse to break down whenever Jimmy tries to order something that will get him killed. And when it’s Frank?   
Well, when it’s Frank, Leonard grits his teeth and swallows his curses in favour of patching the boy up the best he can. He’d like nothing more than to personally make sure that monster never touches either Kirk boy again, but that’s not how this works.   
_Do no harm_ , he promises a lifetime ago, back when he’d still had a heart, and a chest for it to all but burst out of with pride.   
_Do no harm,_ he promises as he watches Jocelyn’s mental state deteriorate, and reminds himself that he took her in sickness as well as in health, and that leaving now will break her.   
_Do no harm,_ he promises, not understanding how he can be dead-but-not-dead, but knowing that his only chance is to follow the rules.   
It goes against every instinct he has, but Leonard runs his hands over bruised skin and chases the nightmares away, and prays to the God he refuses to believe in that it will be enough.   
It’s not. 

  
“We have this perception of angels as these gracious, benevolent beings.” the Professor says, tucking a strand of flyaway grey hair behind her ear with practiced ease. “If you ever actually stop to consider their role in the Bible, it’s quite the opposite. That’s a trend you have to watch out for in writing, something you really have to question. Because whenever celestial imagery is invoked, ask yourself this. Does the author wish to convey goodness? Or something altogether more sinister?”   
Her class is half full, made up of college kids who are beginning to discover that Literary Symbolism won’t be nearly as easy a course to score some cheap credits on as they were hoping. One girl near the back raises her hand tentatively.   
“I don’t understand, Professor.”   
“Think about it.” the hazel eyes sparkle mischievously. “What do angels always say when they appear?”   
“Don’t be afraid?”   
“Exactly. What kind a being must they be, to have to ask prophets and kings to get up off the floor and stop crying at every turn? What is it about angels, that we should be so afeared?”

  
  
Jimmy is twelve when Sam snaps. Frank smells like cheap beer (for real now) and a metallic tang (not yet, not quite yet, but soon) and it’s the first real day of summer when the eldest Kirk decides he can’t take it any more. He can’t stay in the farmhouse another day, and he can’t call his mother, whose precious Starfleet he hates almost as much as the man who has replaced his father. He packs a bag and storms out into the world alone, no matter how much Jimmy begs him to stay.   
Sam doesn’t look back, and for a long time, Leonard will try not to hate him for it.   
For the most part, he will fail.   
And so Jimmy is twelve, and he is left with a stepfather who now has to resort to his second favourite punching bag. And a doctor, who is silently begging him not to do anything stupid. And a shiny red Chevrolet.   
_Who is he? Jim Kirk?_   
It’s not the needle climbing over eighty that terrifies Leonard. It’s not the roof flying away, nor the crash as they barrel through the wooden gates. It’s the scream Jimmy lets out, wild and primal and utterly triumphant. Because he doesn't need to be the kid’s guardian _whatever_ to feel the joy rolling off him in waves. Jimmy is finally happy as he accelerates towards the cliff edge, and Leonard knows with a piercing certainty that he’s not going to stop.   
_He needs you._   
“You’ll be okay as long as you keep your feet on the ground.” Sam had told him. But maybe James Kirk was always meant to fly. 

  
He’s too late to save the car, a tragedy even for an old country doctor who’s never much bothered himself about such flashy machines. He isn’t too late, however, to grab the twelve year old by the scruff of the neck and bodily haul him out of danger. They hit the ground hard, Leonard doing his best to absorb most of the impact. For one horrible moment, the momentum sends them cascading towards the cliff edge. It’s a drop into empty air, and for all the jokes that an infant of a captain will one day make, it’s not like Leonard actually has wings. If they go over, he’ll never find out who Jimmy might grow to be. So he holds on with everything he has, and Jimmy doesn’t join the car at the bottom of the cliff.   
No matter how much he may have wanted to.   
He does end up with one hell of a scar on one shoulder though, one that never quite heals.   
“I wasn’t thinking,” Jim (just Jim, now) will confess one night, when he’s not nearly as drunk as he pretends to be. “I wanted to… fuck, I don’t know, but jumping wasn’t it. I don’t even remember jumping, just the dust and the heat and-“ he’ll break off, eyes impossibly wide, and Leonard will place a hand on his shoulder. “I guess there’s always been some part of me that wanted to beat the odds. That didn’t believe in no win scenarios.”   
Leonard will grunt something well meaning, let the cadet stumble to bed, and silently swear never to tell Jim that he’s been saving him long before the idiot was capable of saving himself.   
The officer takes Jim back to the farmhouse. He’s wearing a fresh cut across his bottom lip, dust on his jeans, and a brand new bracelet on his ankle. The officer takes great pains to explain how it’s programmed to the property boundaries of the farm, and how he’s not to breach those boundaries until his trial next week. In the end, it’s that bloody bracelet that saves him. Or screws him, depending on your cynicism. Leonard will have no doubt which side he stands on. Because it’s the bracelet that proves Jimmy Kirk didn’t leave the house all night, and so can’t possibly be connected to the body of his step father that’s found in a stinking alley the next morning.   
Is he responsible? Of course not. Is he connected? Abso-fucking-lutely 

  
“There’s rules to this, you see. Lines you gotta draw in the sand.”   
Leonard has no definite context for time, but he’s pretty sure he’s been doing this for about six months now. Six months since he found himself in a diner despite being very much dead, and six months that he’s been saving the lives of people who will never know his name.   
There are two of them on this particular job, and Leonard has no idea why the twins they have been sent to save are so special. All he knows is that this conversation with Philip Boyce, as they help their charges fight off a fever, is the first time he’s been able to talk to someone properly since the day he bled out on his own kitchen floor.   
“Rules? Like laws?”   
Boyce shakes his head softly. “No, just rules. Some you set for yourself and some... well, you just don’t go messing with what isn’t yours to mess with.”   
The first kind, Leonard bends a hundred times before he ever hears the name Jim Kirk. He bends it in Johannesburg, watching a sixteen year old girl sleep in the shell of a bombed out church and finding himself hoping she makes it.   
The second kind, he doesn’t even consider breaking until he meets a boy with eyes the colour of lightning. 

  
Frank leaves Jimmy on the floor, spitting blood and curses alike onto the carpet. This is nothing new. Leonard knows how to get Jimmy through this (how to get them both through this) but the words that Frank hisses as he walks out the door are something else all together.   
“You should have followed that fucking car over the cliff.”   
It’s a small thing, minute in comparison to years of physical abuse. But it’s the final spark to ignite a maelstrom that’s been quietly brewing for eight years. The door closes and Leonard decides, quite calmly and objectively, that Frank Gorsky is going to die.   
He waits until Jimmy is asleep, until his bruises are healing and his nightmares have been vanquished to the furthest reaches of his mind. It’s the least Leonard can do. He’ll probably never see the kid again, after all. And doesn’t that hurt, hurt like nothing has in a long time. He brushes the hair away from Jimmy’s closed eyes, and tries not to wonder if they’ll send someone to take his place, or if the boy will simply be left to fend for himself. It’s an unsettling thought, but not near enough to change his mind. His only regret, as Leonard walks away from the farmhouse, is that he didn’t do this years ago.   
Frank Gorsky is smoking behind a dive bar three miles out from Riverside, and he never see’s Leonard coming. The angel wraps his hand around his throat (and okay, right now he’ll accept the damn title because he’s every inch the avenging kind) and squeezes. The satisfaction he feels as he watches a trickle of blood bloom in the corner of Frank’s mouth isn’t very angelic, but Leonard finds he doesn’t much care.   
He’s still standing there, in the alley that stinks of cheap beer and the metallic tang of blood when Christine comes to stand by his side. She glances down at the man who stopped twitching several minutes ago, back up to Leonard, then sighs. It’s not her usual exasperated huff, though. It’s almost regretful.   
“I suppose you’d better follow me, McCoy.”   
Leonard is young, relatively speaking. He died young, and he hasn’t been around long enough to understand how this whole thing works. He doesn’t know how people are chosen, or who’s in charge, or even how he’s still walking around more than seventy years after he breathed his last. Up until now, he’s never cared all that much, but there’s no denying it would be nice to know what’s going to happen to him now.   
He’s not really sitting in a cell, except that he is in every way that matters. The cell is as real as the office, or the jacket he still wears. It’s as real as he allows it to be, and Leonard knows a thing or two about prisons of his own making.   
And still, he can’t bring himself to regret it. Nor does the thought to pray even cross his mind. 

  
There’s a small chapel on board, he discovers when he finally looks at the information pack he was handed a week and several billion lives ago. It’s not until the ship is limping slowly back from the clusterfuck with Nero, and Pike is as stable as he’ll get that Leonard goes to visit what is officially called the multi faith room, with lips still aflame. He choses to come in the middle of Beta shift, when the place should hopefully be empty. Of course, his luck doesn’t stretch that far.   
Uhura is sitting on one of the benches, a small candle cradled in her palms. She offers a tentative smile as he enters.   
“Hi, Doctor. I didn’t know you were religious.”   
“I’m not,” he admits. “I just thought maybe I’d…” he doesn’t finish the sentence, but she nods in understanding. They’ve lost a whole damn planet and almost everyone in their graduating class. It’s enough to make anyone turn to a higher power.  That’s not the reason he’s here, not exactly, but there’s no way he can explain to her that he’s here because he wants some damn answers.   
“I should thank you,” she says. “For what you’ve done.”   
“I’ve done my job.”   
“No.” she stands, and then has to balance onto her tiptoes to kiss him softly on the cheek. “You’ve done so much more than that.”   
She’s talking about the hours of intense surgery he’s clocked, about the group psychic counselling sessions he’s been quietly facilitating for their Vulcan refugees. She must be. There’s no way she can know about anything else. But all the same, as she leaves, Leonard can’t help but think that Miss Nyota Uhura might just be the smartest person on this damn tincan.   
But she’s not what he came here for. If you want to be technical about it, he’s over a hundred years old, and maybe it’s time Leonard McCoy had a crisis of faith. 

  
There’s no sense of time here, no way to even guess how long he spends pacing up and down the narrow length of his cell. Centuries could have gone by. It’s just as likely to have been seconds. Leonard passes the not-time by thinking, casting his mind over every soul he’s ever held in his hands.   
The messenger.   
The professor.   
The nebula, with eyes made of lightning.   
His thoughts circle back to Jimmy more than he cares to admit. Breaking Rule One (and subsequently all the rest) on his behalf was what got Leonard into this mess, but there’s a strange stillness without the companion that has filled his waking hours for twelve years.   
Leonard’s only glad he beat him to it, that he snapped first. That much, at least he’s been able to save him from. Because Jimmy Kirk may be many things, but a killer is not one of them.   
Not yet.   
(Her name is Neri, and she is just too small, and Jimmy buries her himself, hurling energy he can’t afford to waste at the uncaring ground.)   
In the end, it’s Christine who comes for him. Or should that be _Chapel_ now? She’d certainly switched back to McCoy the moment he’d screwed up. But as soon as he sees her face, such thoughts disappear from his mind. She’s never been as composed as she likes to think, and over the years he’s seen many expressions cross her face. Exasperation. Fondness. Pride, even. But never once, not for a second, has she looked afraid before.   
“James Kirk is in need of protection.” Christine announces, answering the question that Leonard asks with his eyes when words fail.   
“And you want to send me?”   
“You,” she says, and  _sweet Jesus,_ her voice has never trembled before, “Are precisely what he needs.”   
Leonard doesn’t ask. He only goes. 

  
“Characters,” says the Professor, “Are never just one thing, because people are never just one thing. You’re never just a hero, or a villain, or a victim. You’re all of those and more, all at once. To be human is to be this great big mess of people, all trying to break free. Metaphors will never try and tell you just one thing, because that would be a tremendous waste of words.” Something of the southern drawl she has worked so hard to repress over the years creeps into her voice as she finishes. She takes off her glasses to clean them, and for a moment the light behind her hazel eyes, untarnished by the years, is clear to see.   
“People are complicated.” she says. “Take my mother. She raised credits for charities all across this quadrant. She always took the time to cut the crusts of my sandwiches, and she promised that she’d fight her illness for me. In many ways, she was a wonderful woman.” Professor Johanna McCoy says. “She was also a murderer.” 

  
Jimmy is fourteen now, as far as Leonard can tell. He’s taller, hair a shade darker, and all traces of boyish roundness have left his face. Although the last one’s less to do with being two years older, than it’s being an breath away from starvation.   
It’s the bracelet that screws him, the bracelet around his ankle that proves that Jimmy had been safely at home when Frank Gorsky suffered death by divine intervention. He can’t possibly be blamed, so instead of packing him off to a nice cosy juvenile detention centre, the authorities in Riverside are left with the problem of Jimmy Kirk. His mother can’t be reached, his primary carer is lying out on a slab with a tag around his toe, and his brother has vanished into the Iowa sunset. It’s a forward thinking social worker who suggests a fresh start on an off world colony. She’s young, and hopes the boy with such intriguing blue eyes will be happy there.   
She will never stop blaming herself.   
One day, Jim will talk about Tarsus IV, and Leonard will find he has exactly the same problem.   
It’s good at first, to hear him tell it. A whole new world where no one knows his name, and Frank is nothing more than a distant memory. School is engaging for the first time, the sky overhead startlingly blue, and even when the crops start to fail it’s the happiest Jimmy has ever been. Right up until the day that Governor Kudos calls almost two thousand colonists into the central square and executes every single one without hesitation.   
Almost every single one.   
Jimmy survives from the twin virtues of being short, and having lived his whole life watching for the next blow. He’ll never know where the instinct to drop half a second before the phasers discharged over his head comes from, but it saves his life. He drops, and he runs, and by the time Leonard reaches his side, Jimmy is hiding twelve children from the execution squads, and hasn’t eaten anything more substantial than handfuls of mouldy grain in a week.   
_He needs you._   
Jimmy needed him. And Leonard wasn’t there.

  
  
“What’s that one?”   
The two boys are lying flat on their backs on the roof of an old water tower, bikes lying discarded on the ground below them. Leonard is keeping half an eye out, because Jimmy is eight and it would be just like him to wander too close to the edge, but there’s something peaceful about the scene that feels almost wrong to intrude upon. Frank is out of town on business, and school doesn’t go back for another three weeks. It’s as if the sky above, as clear as can be found anywhere on earth these days, hangs just for them.   
“Ursa Minor.”   
Jimmy traces the shape of the stars with his fingers. “Ursa Minor,” he whispers. “Is that where Mum is?”   
“No, Mum’s light years away. She’s so far away we can’t even see where she is.” Sam is almost eleven, and is beginning to understand that Winona Kirk has chosen the sky over her own sons.   
“I’m gonna go up there one day. I’m gonna explore the whole universe, and everywhere I go I’ll leave a big trail of smoke behind so you can look up and see where I am.”   
It’s a pretty picture and Sam almost laughs. Almost. Instead, he asks “Why would you want to go up there?”   
“To be a hero. Just like Dad was.”   
“You don’t know what your talking about. Space is shit, and nothing good ever happens there. You’ll be okay as long as you keep your feet on the ground.” 

  
It’s not hard to work out why Christine has sent him and not another guardian, one who hasn’t already broken all the rules. Leonard has already killed a man for Jimmy Kirk, and there’s only going to be more blood spilt if he’s going to live. If the other kids are going to live as well, because any fool could see that Jimmy needs them to. Needs it as much as he needs the handfuls of bread he gives away to the others. It’s hard, so much harder to save the lives of people who aren’t his to save, but Leonard is going to damn well try all the same.   
Some he can help.   
(No one notices the way that the boy with burns scarring his face breathes a little easier, nor how his fever breaks overnight.)   
Some he can’t.   
(Her name is Neri and she is just too small, and Jimmy buries her himself, hurling energy he can’t afford to waste at the uncaring ground.)   
Years later, Jim will tell him how he would have given anything to die in her place, and Leonard will believe him. The third time he saves Jimmy from starvation, the boy screams at the twin suns hanging in a sky that’s the same colour as his eyes with unbridled rage.   
They keep moving as best they can, but in the end it’s not enough. The soldiers come, and Jimmy takes the flare they have been saving for a miracle and runs. The other children scramble in the other direction. He doesn’t get far, and when one of them finally manages to force his face into the dirt with the heel of his boot, Jimmy only smiles. The ground is dusty and dry, and for one beautiful moment the sound of a roaring engine and classical music pounds in his ears.   
Only this time, there’s nothing Leonard can do to pull Jimmy from the car.   
He tries. Sweet Jesus, he tries. By the time they haul the boy away, there are five guards lying on the ground, and only two of them were put there by Jimmy. Leonard has no idea if they’re dead or not. He doesn’t care. All he knows is that it’s the most energy he’s every exerted on someone who isn’t Jimmy. The last thought he has before the black comes rushing to meet him is a quiet surprise that he’s able to faint at all.   
He doesn’t know how long he’s out, but when he wakes up, they’re in a deceptively clean room and Jimmy is…   
Oh _Crucified Christ_ , Jimmy is…   
If Leonard had had a stomach, he would have emptied it all over the floor with a drain in one corner. It’s all he can do to crawl over to the shaking boy, curl around him, and try to protect him from what little pain he can.   
Starfleet emergency forces arrive six days later. Neither Jimmy, nor Leonard (nor Jim, nor Bones, nor Captain James Tiberius Kirk) will ever talk about those six days. 

  
Jim kisses him at the stroke of midnight, while fireworks explode high above the bay. He tastes of liquor and nighttime, but it’s the heat that Leonard registers. The heat radiating off his skin reminiscent of so many fevers upon his brow, utterly at odds with the shivering child who had sheltered in a cave. For a moment, he cannot think.   
Then he pushes the cadet away, and does his best  to neither throw up in a trash can (which he manages) nor to hate himself (which he doesn’t.)

  
  
Leonard thinks he knows what hurt is. It hurt when he broke his wrist when he was eight. It hurt when Jocelyn snarled at him that she wasn’t going to let him take their daughter away. It hurt when he died.   
This is nothing.   
_Who is he? Jim Kirk? He’s amazing._ No, he’s broken.   
He doesn’t speak when the rescue team cut him free, nor when the well meaning captain asks if he has any family she can contact. He only smiles once, when they let him visit the children rescued from the planet’s surface. When Jimmy lit the flare and ran, there had been ten of them, aged from four to eleven and all terrified. In the too-white light of the ship’s medbay, there are six.   
Leonard is sure the medical equipment the doctors wave around are top of the range, futuristic wonders that would normally have him drooling. Right now, he wishes nothing more than for them all just to go away, and leave him to put the patchwork child back together as best he can.   
He’s not sure if that’s his thought, or Jimmy’s, the utter loathing of the people trying to help him. Maybe they are one and the same these days.   
It takes them three weeks to make the journey from Tarsus IV to earth.   
“What’s your name, son?” the Admiral asks squatting down so he’s at eye level with the teenager, who isn’t so much reassured as he’s thinking about how easy it would be to stab the man in the neck from this angle. He doesn’t do that, but he does look at him with eyes the colour of an uncaring sky.   
“George.” he smiles. 

  
“You’re concerned about the Captain,” Spock says, after a meeting in which Jim yells at three engineers. It’s not a question.   
Yeah, well, what’s new? Leonard thinks. Aloud, he simply says “It’s this crap with the slavers. They’re under his skin, and not in a good way.”   
“I confess, I do not understand.” It costs the Vulcan something to admit it, and another time Leonard might have savoured the look of discomfort on his face. “This is the fourth dealing we’ve had with a slave vessel on this mission, and never before has the captain displayed such-“   
“Never before,” Leonard interrupts him, running a hand over his face and wondering if it’s socially acceptable to drink before midday on a ship where time is artificial, “Have they been carrying fucking children.” 

  
There are three things that fill Leonard’s life for the next ten years. The first (always and forever first) is Jim. Amazingly, there’s little to do in the way of keeping him alive. A few scuffles behind bars maybe, and once the most comprehensive concussion Leonard has ever seen, but for the most part he scrapes by. And no matter whether he calls himself George, or Sam, or JT, or sometimes even Jim (but never Jimmy) he is forever on the move. Jim trades the farmhouse for beat up old truck and an eight pack of Budweiser Classic when he’s sixteen, and the two of them crisscross the midwest. They stay in the same place anywhere from a night to a couple of months, long enough for Jim to find work in a garage, or behind a bar, or add another pointless degree to his roster. By the time he’s twenty, the truck has been swapped for a bike that damn near gives Leonard a heart attack, and Jim has degrees in theoretical physics, Orion language and botany of all things. Not to mention advanced degrees in computer sciences and aerospace engineering. It’s maddening, and some days Leonard wants to slap the almost-man across the face and tell him to do something with that mind of his. But he never does and Jim keeps moving, feet firmly on the ground.   
He keeps himself alive though, more or less, so Leonard supposes he shouldn’t complain.   
The fact that he keeps himself alive, though, means Leonard spends a great deal of his time wondering just how long he’s going to be allowed to stay with him. He broke all the rules. He’s lost count of the men he’s killed for Jim Kirk (that’s a lie, he remembers every single one) and Jim doesn’t need him any more. The first two years back on earth, every time Leonard turns around he expects to see Christine standing behind him with a sad smile on her face.   
She never appears.   
Maybe they've forgotten about him. He doesn’t believe that for a moment, but as the months fade into years and he’s still here, Leonard starts to think it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. To be forgotten, to live out the rest of his days by the side of a boy whose wings have been broken.   
The third thing happens by accident. They’re in Kansas City, and Jim’s in the university filling out the paperwork to enrol in five week cookery course (honestly, Leonard is sure that the kid’s just screwing with him at this stage) when a group of lecturers walks past. Jim doesn’t give them so much as a second look, but Leonard feels the memory of his heart skip a beat as he stares at the woman who brings up the rear, near hidden behind a stack of padds.   
_Jo?_

  
“Would you ever want kids?” the captain asks, stretching out across his bed like a cat trying to catch every last drop of sunlight.   
Leonard snorts from across the room where he’s pulling his shirt on. There’s no way Jim can know that if he wants to be the first person to ever have this conversation with him, he’s about a hundred years too late.   
“I’ve got you. You’re more of an infant than any kid ever could be.”   
Jim scrunches up his face in a way that Leonard will deny to his dying (again) breath is utterly adorable. “Is that subordination I’m hearing, Doctor?”   
“You bet your ass it is.”   
He doesn’t have to look up to see the smirk making its way across Jim’s face, but Leonard knows it’s there none the less, ever as he rummages around the mess of a cabin for him comm. He’s not expecting for Jim to say, in a far more serious a voice than he ever uses when he’s off duty “Seriously though? Kids? You’d be one hell of a father, I reckon.”   
_I’m really not._

  
Who would have known that Leonard could ever be so grateful for a cooking course of all things, and it’s not just because of the I’m-sorry brownies Jim will make him after the Garry Mitchell Incident.  Jim ends up staying in Kansas city for almost three months, and Leonard spends his days at the back of a lecture theatre, watching students fall in love with literature despite themselves as his daughter talks. And call him biased but, she’s amazing. The wrong side of eighty and still talking about Orwell and Zusak and Shelley with the same passion he’d heard around the dinner table a lifetime ago as she dove into Harry Potter for the first time. He hasn’t kept tabs on her over the years, has purposely kept his head down every time he found himself within five hundred miles of Georgia, but she’s here, she’s magnificent, and God, she did alright in the end.   
It almost gives him hope for anyone.   
  
  
“You’ll be okay as long as you keep your feet on the ground,” Sam had said, and while Jim is fine in the broadest possible sense of the word (read: alive) there’s a restlessness brewing behind his eyes. It’s been there his whole life, and some nights when all is still and there’s nothing for Leonard to do but watch him sleep, he fancies he can see it in the blood that runs beneath his skin. Jim Kirk was made for more than this, and he’d know it even if the boy hadn’t been chosen to be saved. He just has no idea what it is that Jim’s missing. At least he doesn’t until an answer walks into a bar and whistles the whole room to attention.   
Leonard recognises the man at once. He’s hovering by Jim’s shoulder, ready to step in if this escalates into more than the average ethanol-soaked punch up, and for a moment he freezes with the rest of the cadets in the room. His hair is no longer the colour of straw, and his chest remarkably clear of gaping wounds, but this is undoubtedly Christopher Pike.   
_Captain_ Christopher Pike, if the stripes on his arm are anything to go by. Well how about that.   
Pike breaks up the scuffle, presses a wad of napkins into Jim’s hands and proceeds to try and pursues Jim to enlist. And does a phenomenally poor job of it, in Leonard’s opinion. Pike’s a good man, but Jim’s been comparing himself to the ghost of his father his whole life, and he’s hardly a fan of space these days.   
He should have known better by now. Should have known what the words _I dare you_ would do.   
Leonard isn’t surprised when Pike walks away with a soft shake of his head. He is surprised, however, someone taps him on the shoulder. He jerks around with a start, only to look into a face lined with more than laughter.   
“Long time, no see, Leonard.”   
Boyce has changed. Leonard’s pretty sure that his own face is still that of the twenty eight year old who had died on his own kitchen floor, but Boyce looks older than he remembers, hair more salt than pepper. Bizarrely, he also seems to be sporting a tan, although the word that comes to mind is weathered. But all of this barely registers, because Boyce is the first person to say a word to Leonard since the day Christine told him to go to Jim.   
Five words. His name. And suddenly it’s all too much. Before Leonard can do something unbelievably stupid like cry, he asks “What in the hell are you doing here?”   
“What, a guy can’t drop in on an old friend?”   
“Not when he’s like you and me he can’t. Did Christine send you?”   
The idea seems to amuse Boyce for some reason, but there’s no warmth behind it. His mouth twists into a mockery of a smile. ”Christine? Christine doesn’t have a clue I’m here, and I’d be obliged if you kept it that way.”   
And suddenly Leonard is paying full attention. Something is going on here, and if the twist in his memory of a gut is anything to go by, it’s not good. “What?”   
“Listen to me.” The humour is gone in an instant, and Boyce’s voice is low and urgent. “Tomorrow morning, James Kirk is going to join Starfleet, and your job will be done. You’ll have got him where he needs to go, and someone upstairs will do a very comprehensive job of making sure you never cross his path again.”   
“That’s… that’s good.” Leonard manages around the lump that has formed in his throat. It’s not like he hasn’t been expecting this for years. All things considering, he think’s he manages a pretty good impression of someone who hasn’t just had their whole world wrenched from beneath their feet. “He’ll do well. The kid’s wasting himself on this damned planet.”   
Boyce glares. “That’s it? You’ve been with this boy his whole life, and all you can say is that’s good? Do you have any idea…?” He trails off, shaking his head in disbelief. “Let me tell you something, Leonard. You let that boy walk out that door on his own, and three years from now, he’ll be dead.”   
The words crash around his ears like water. Jim? Dead? No matter how many times he has pulled the kid back from the brink, the two ideas refuse to merge in his brain. Jim Kirk is the most alive thing on this whole damn rock, even when his smile doesn’t reach his eyes and he gives girls at bars the name of his dead father.   
Leonard thinks about the girl in Johannesburg, and how he told herself that she would be okay when he left, and how her name is carved into a memorial stone in the city she loved. He thinks of Jim’s name, perhaps carved beneath that of his father. And finds the image fundamentally unacceptable.   
“So what do I do, exactly? Fight off a whole legion of feathered assholes? Because I’m not seeing many options here.”   
“You want to know something weird? That’s just what I thought. But you’d be amazed at how little it takes to rock the boat these days. And when the boat’s rocking, it’s easy to slip overboard without a soul noticing.”   
Leonard shakes his head impatiently. A lifetime ago, Jocelyn would tease him relentlessly about his love of over-complicated metaphors, but he’s in no mood for puzzles. This is Jim’s life they’re talking about. Jim’s life and, he can’t help but feel with not a small amount of dread, something altogether much bigger. But before he can demand an answer, a voice interrupts them. “Hey, Phil? Are you coming or not?”   
It’s Pike. He’s back, which is odd in itself. But that’s nothing in comparison to the fact that he’s looking right at Boyce. Not through him. _At_ him, with an expression that’s half fondness, half exasperation. And talking to him. Leonard can’t help but gape, but Boyce only smiles.   
“In a minute. Let a man finish his beer, you menace.”   
Pike cocks an eyebrow and saunters off. In his absence, Leonard can only stutter.   
“But… but you… and he just… how did…?”   
“I realised that maybe there’s more options that I thought. That maybe when the folks upstairs decided that someone had to die, maybe they could go screw themselves for a change.”   
“Phil…” Leonard says, voice low. Because this is the man who had told him about the rules in the first damn place, and unless he is very much mistaken, the man who wants him to tear them all to dust. “What have you done?”   
“Your boy’s gone, Leonard.” And sure enough, the table at which Jim had been sitting and nursing his nosebleed is empty. “What’s it gonna be?” 

  
  
“The test itself is a cheat, is it not?” Jim asks, and underneath all that cocky bullshit, Leonard thinks he understands. Sometimes there’s no other way out than to look at all the rules, all the lines you’ve ever drawn for yourself in the sand, and say fuck that.

  
  
Jim arrives at the shipyard with five minutes to spare until launch, and if Pike is amazed that he showed up, then he does a damn good job of hiding it. Leonard, despite everything, is grudgingly impressed. The Captain must have one hell of a knack for reading people, if he can talk Jim into doing something as mind-numbingly stupid as enlisting.   
“Four years?” Jim asks. “I’ll do it in three.” He climbs inside the shuttle that will take him to Starfleet, to his future, and, if Phil can be believed, his inevitable death in three years.   
Oh God, Jim, you idiot. Three years.   
If Leonard follows the rules and walks away now, he’ll never see him again.   
_He needs you._ _  
_ _She is brave, and she is afraid._ _  
_ _I couldn’t just leave you standing there all pathetic._   
And when it comes down to it, not even a choice.   
“Leonard McCoy.”   
There’s a man standing in front of the shuttle. He’s young, and the mop of curly hair doesn’t move at all, despite the gentle wind stirring around the shipyard. Leonard doesn’t have to look at the technicals and officials passing by to know that none of them see him.   
“You need to come with me now.”   
“Like hell I do,” he growls.   
He blinks, surprised. Clearly he isn’t expecting an argument, and Leonard briefly wonders how the hell Boyce has kept their conversation a secret. “This isn’t a negotiation.”   
Damn right it isn’t. “They should have sent Christine,” he says. “I might have felt bad about hitting her if she didn’t get out of my way.” Leonard pauses, tilts his head slightly, and wonders if he can still pull off the scary motherfucker routine that he used to pull on incompetent med students. “They’ve told you who I am, right? What I’ve done to protect that kid?”   
The man falters. “You don’t understand! To disobey… Do you have the faintest idea as to what that means?”   
He doesn’t, in all honesty. Leonard doesn’t have a clue what’s going on. He only knows that Jim needs him the way he’s always needed him, and there’s no way he won’t be standing by his side. He strides forward, and the angel vanishes the second before Leonard collides with him, the growing expression of fear on his face just visible before he melts into the morning air. Later, Leonard will sort through this whole damn mess. Later, he will work out what the hell is going on, and what to do about it. This has suddenly become a lot bigger than Jim Kirk, that’s for sure. Maybe it always has been. But there’s no time to think about that right now. He has a shuttle to catch, after all.   
Leonard climbs aboard, and the moment his hand touches the metal of the ship, a force slams into his chest like a sledge hammer. He staggers slightly and sucks in a tight breath, for a moment to stunned to work out where the attack is coming from. He’s he’s struck again, and almost falls right back out of the shuttle this time. And again, and again, his body wracked.  Each blow is like a war drum pounding right against his hea-   
Oh. Oh fucking hell, _no_ .   
Leonard squeezes his eyes shut against the sensation he barely recognises after ninety years. His heart beating in his chest. That’s not all either, and through the dizziness and sound of blood rushing through his ears, he’s aware of other feelings. Half-forgotten memories of life cascading around him in full high definition and surround sound. The air rushing down his throat is crisp, the nerves in his finger tips tinge a dull static buzz, the old leather jacket is soft against his skin and-   
And he’s going to throw up.   
  
  
Eventually he’s bustled out of the shuttle bathroom by a woman who reminds him of Christine, if Christine was ten years older and had spent every second of the difference perfecting her glare. She isn’t impressed with his insistence he doesn’t need a seat, nor with the aviophobia he quickly feigns to cover his nausea. It’s a pretty terrible excuse, and she doesn’t buy it for a moment. But as thrown as he is, it’s all Leonard can do to complain that he is a doctor (Is he really? Anymore?)  before she sits him down.   
This is crazy, and yes, he understands that word a little better now. He’s breathing, and he’s alive, and, _Christ_ , couldn’t Phil have taken a second to maybe explain that this was part of the deal?   
Leonard glances around, and promptly struggles not to die again of a heart attack right where he sits. Because there is Jim Kirk, looking at him, seeing him for the first time in twenty five years. It’s a superficial glance of those blue eyes, nothing to speak of really, but it’s a privilege Leonard thought he’d never know. He should say something profound and meaningful. Manage to put into words the weight of this moment. The best he can come up with is the truth.   
“I may throw up on you.”   
He doesn’t thank God for this, not while he grumbles about all the dangers of space and silently wills Jim to understand what a bad idea this will be. Throws every horror he can think of in his face, on the off-chance that Jim’s already second guessing his impulse decision to board the shuttle. Three years, Phil had said? The stars will go out before that happens, Leonard vows, and this dirty shuttle is as good a place as any to begin saving Jim from himself.. He wants to shake the kid, hit him round the head and scream “Don’t you remember Tarsus? That shit-show? And now you want to go back out there? Don’t you know this is going to kill you?”   
Jim doesn’t seem phased, and it seems that Leonard hasn’t developed psychic powers along with his newly beating heart. “I hate to break it to you, but Starfleet operates in space.”   
“Yeah well, got nowhere else to go. All I’ve got left is my bones.” The _and you_ goes unsaid.   
The almost-man sticks out his hand, and after twenty seven years of watching over his every breath, Leonard finds himself meeting James Tiberius Kirk.   
And you know what? Madly, impossibly, against all odds and sensible course of action, it might all turn out okay.   
(It won’t. Not for a long time.) 

  
“So should I start shopping for headstones?” the Captain asks.`   
“You’ll live,” Leonard replies with a grumble, tying the bandage with a flourish and discreetly waving a hand to push the healing process along. It’s his foot he’s gone and busted with his heroics, for Christ’s sake, and he will never stop wondering at Jim’s ability to be a drama queen.   
“No need to look so sad about it. What are you, my pissed off guardian angel?”   
For a second, Leonard’s hands freeze over the UV he’s adjusting. Jim’s joking, he knows, but the young captain can have no idea for t’s the question that Leonard’s been asking himself for years. Once, he may have spluttered indignities and stalked off. Now, he only smiles. “That’s exactly what I am..”   
And if he administers the hypo with extra vigour, no one can prove a thing. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Part 2 - Stella**

 

What with the whole suddenly being alive thing, as well as the fact he’s having a real two sided conversation with Jim Kirk for the first time, Leonard doesn’t stop to consider that he technically doesn’t exist until Captain Pike announces that they’re coming into land in San Francisco. He doesn’t have documentation, unless you include a death certificate that’s ninety years old, and he never enrolled in Starfleet. Oh God, they’re going to throw him out, and this whole thing will have been for nothing, and Jim only has three fucking years, and-

“Hey, Bones. Breathe.”

Leonard opens the eyes that he only vaguely recalls shutting in panic. Jim is looking at him with concern, and a kind smile that he hasn’t seen in far too long. “Landing’s easy. And Pike’s a captain. I think we’re in good hands.”

Oh, right, the aviophobia he’s supposed to be crippled by. Had he not been teetering on the edge of panic, Leonard might have queried ‘Bones’ (and oh, how he’ll regret not shooting that one down before it sticks.) But right now, he just grimaces back, and tries not to think about the reassuring hand that rests on his knee.

As it turns out, not existing isn’t a problem. The troop of new recruits, both those clad in red and the late comers alike are shepherded straight to orientation, and the man behind the desk barely raises his eyebrows as he says “Um, Dr Leonard McCoy?”

“Advanced medical track. You’re scheduled shifts in the academy clinic as well as your classes, so if you’ve got any timetabling problems take them to someone who gives a damn. You’re in the Cromwell building. Room 308.”

“I.. thanks,” Leonard says, helpless to stop his eyebrows raising in surprise as he wonders who the hell managed to set all this up. Fifteen minutes later, however, as he opens his door and is met with a grin, he’s pretty sure he knows exactly who did this.

“Hey, Bones! What are you doing here?” Leonard holds up his key, and Jim’s eyes widen. “Are we roommates? No way!”

“Looks like it.”

“That is so weird.”

It’s the least weird thing that’s happened to Leonard all day, so he only shrugs. There’s a navy duffle bag on the floor with his name printed neatly on the tag, and he waits until Jim is distracted by the replicator (“This thing is programmed with everything! Let’s have Sushi! No, wait! They’ve got those spicy things from Orion, what are they called?”) to examine it’s contents. There are several sets of cadet reds, as well as medical whites, and a small stack of documents. Apparently Leonard McCoy was born in Georgia (true), is thirty two years old (false) and divorced (that’s certainly one word for it). He also has a modest, although not insignificant stack of credits to his name, and the first thing he does with them is buy Philip Boyce an incredibly expensive bottle of bourbon.

It would have been a whole crate, had it not been for the shout of laughter from Jim. He opens the door to what apparently is the only bedroom, and  _ oh hell no _ . They have fucking bunkbeds.

For a moment, the two men stare in horror at their sleeping arrangement. Then Jim smiles his most shit-eating grin and waggles his eyebrows. “So what’s it going to be, Bonsey? Are you a top or a bottom?”

Leonard throws a pillow at him, and Jim laughs, and all things considered, it’s not the worst way to start a friendship.

 

 

Jim takes to San Fransisco like a duck to water, and by the end of the week Leonard’s been approached no less than five times by strangers asking for his comm. Funnily enough, only two of them are young, female, and clearly looking for a hook up. Jim must be doing something right, because he’s already being scouted by a third year study group, an engineering professor, and, for some reason, the academy chess club. 

“Do you ever sleep?” Leonard asks one evening, as Jim rushed through the door with a look on his face that suggests he’ll be staying maybe thirty seconds before leaving again.

“You can talk.” Jim’s head is in the fridge so he can’t see Leonard roll his eyes. Not that it stops him from rolling them anyway. “Hey, are these yogurts okay for me to eat?”

“No.”

There’s nothing in their tiny fridge, nor is there any code on the replicator for something Jim’s allergic to. Leonard dragged him to the clinic the first chance he got on the premise of carrying allergy tests. In reality, he’ simply made sure that the ever expanding list of food that is Very Bad, Do Not Let Jim Eat he’d memorised was correct, and he shops accordingly. 

But Jim has a tendency to make any food in his general vicinity disappear. And Leonard really likes those yogurts.

Not that Leonard has much time to shop, of course. He’s just as busy as Jim is, although that’s less through choice than it is because some idiot decided that making med students do shifts in the clinic on top of a normal cadet workload was a good idea. 

(Secretly he thinks it’s a brilliant idea. Leonard was a trauma surgeon, even before he spent ninety years patching up people seconds from death. But most of his classmates have nothing in the way of practical experience. It’s one thing to ace your xenobiology final, but it’s another thing altogether to be handed a fast dwindling life and being told it’s yours to save. And to be put in that situation out in the black, with limited supplies and no margin for error? If these kids are going to be worth a damn to the fleet, they’re going to need all the experience they can get.)

But in public? Well, Leonard has a reputation to uphold, so you bet your ass he’s going to complain like hell.

They may be living together, sitting half of the same classes, and actually able to have a conversation with each other, but Leonard thinks this is probably the least he’s seen Jim since the two years he spent in one of heaven’s holding cells.

And he’s not entirely sure how he feels about that.

 

 

He’s most of the way through a double shift at the clinic, and there’s not enough coffee in the entire world. Leonard glances at the clock on the wall, stretches, tells another patient off, and wonders if it’s worth the trouble he’ll get for skipping the seminar he’s got next. That’s the funny thing about sleeping, he’s discovered somewhere in the hours before dawn, when the gentle sounds of Jim’s snuffles fill the room. It’s nothing like riding a bike. It’s an art, and in the long years since he last felt fatigue, Leonard’s body has forgotten the skill entirely. 

He’s just finished patching up a pair of engineering cadets who thought it would be a good idea to throw laser precision tools to each other across their lab, and he’s just as likely to murder the next idiot who walks through his door as to treat them. Earth’s best and brightest? His ass. 

“Rough day, Leonard?”

He’s on his feet in a moment, fatigue replaced instantly by a rush of adrenaline, and he almost knocks over his chair in surprise. Christine is sitting on his biobed, wearing a well cut suit that does nothing to hide her slim figure.

“I must say, you’re looking very… vivacious.” 

“Christine?” He has no idea how long it’s been since he saw her, and other than the new outfit isn’t the only thing that’s changed. She’s weary in a way he never imagined her to be capable of, stress fraying the edges of her ever-patient smile. 

“What are you doing here?”

His question is careful, and coupled with a glance towards the door that there’s no way she doesn’t see. Not that it matters, he supposes. The clinic may be teeming with people, but he’d never so much as make the corridor. If she’s here to take him away again, then he’s as good as gone.

“Apparently you prefer it when they send me?” There’s no humour in her voice. “Well here I am, and we need to talk.”

“Talk?” he raises an eyebrow. 

“What were you expecting?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Kidnap. Imprison. Smite, maybe, if you’re feeling so inclined?”

She runs a hand over her face. “You have no idea what you’ve started, have you? You and that boy? How many times I’ve had to stick my neck out against people who would like to wring yours?”

There’s that feeling again, the one that prickled down his spine in riverside shipyard. It’s like realising that you’re walking along a glass cliff, not knowing where the edge into empty air will be, yet helpless to stop yourself moving forward. He swallows, mouth dry with the sudden taste of Riverside dust.

Christine stands and walks to his window. It’s small, and without the view of the bay that the senior doctors enjoy. Instead, she stares out over one of the gates to the academy, ever flowing with the comings and goings of red-clad cadets. “Officially,” she sighs, “I’m here to tell you that you’re on your own. You want our help in saving your pet project? You can forget it.”

He’s suspected that much, between the fact that he’s breathing again, and has to patch Jim up with a replicator, rather than just running his hands over his skin. But guessing and being told are two different things. Leonard sucks in a breath, and if anyone to ask him, he wouldn’t be able to tell them if it was out of fear or relief. 

“And unofficially?”

“Unofficially?” She glances around, and then smiles. Really, truly smiles. “Unofficially, I’m here to say congratulations.”

He blinks. “You’re what?”

“You got out. You found something. Do you know how-?” She clamps her mouth shut abruptly, but she’s still smiling. “I’m happy for you.”

“What’s going on, Christine? Really?”

“It’s not your problem any more. That privilege is all mine.”

“You know, this is all your fault. You’re the one who gave me the damn pep talk.”

“Officially,” she grins, and  _ God _ , does the expression suit her, “It’s Boyce’s fault.”

Christine stands to leave, and Leonard knows with a sudden certainty that once she walks out the door, he will never see her again. “Hey, wait. Just tell me one thing.” There’s so much he wants to ask her, so much he needs to know.  _ Why Jim? Why does Boyce think he only has three years? How the hell am I suddenly alive and human? _ But he knows he won’t get the answers he needs, and somehow he can’t find the words to even try. Instead, he simply says “Christine Chapel. The angel. No way that’s a real name, right?”

Her smile softens. “Goodbye, Leonard. Take care of James Kirk.”

 

 

Jim looks so pained as Leonard walks away from him. Any maybe this is it. Maybe this what Leonard will do that saves his life. But he promised to take care of him. And he can’t leave him behind, looking all pathetic like that.

 

 

By the end of the first year, Leonard regrets sending Boyce even the one bottle of Bourbon. Because yes, he showed Leonard how he stay by Jim’s side, and yes, he set up a whole identity for him in the time it took them to fly from Riverside to San Francisco. But none of that even comes close to making up for the blight upon his existence that is the bunkbed.

For one thing, they’re as uncomfortable as hell. Narrow and made of nothing but springs, and it doesn’t help that Leonard claimed the top one. Knowing Jim’s track record as he does, there’s no way he’s letting him sleep five feet off the ground. He reminds himself this, every time he has to haul himself up off the rickety ladder or nearly falls out of bed himself when his alarm goes off. It’s a small comfort.

For another, he’s not just sleeping in a bunkbed, but he’s sharing said bunk bed with Jim Kirk. Who has an unfortunate habit of forgetting Leonard’s even there.

He’s not ashamed to admit he’s in bed by ten o’clock, coming back from the clinic and pointedly ignoring the assignments from his intro to interspecies ethics class in favour of passing out for a solid eight hours. Unfortunately, it seems the universe has other ideas, and God, what wouldn’t Leonard give for a bit of smiting power about now. 

He’s woken to the sound of the door opening and a voice he doesn’t recognise saying “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever been in this building.”

“It’s not much to scream about,” Jim’s voice replies, and through the muddled layers of sleep, all Leonard can think is well, it’s probably not someone here to rob us then. The relief is short lived, however, as the voice replies “How about I give you something to scream about instead?”

_ Oh hell no _ . Leonard pulls his pillow over his head and groans.  This day has been bad enough without having to listen to Jim have sex through a wall. There’s no way this could get worse.

The door to the bedroom opens and he just had to think that, didn’t he?

A pair of bodies crashes onto the bed below him, and no, that’s the limit of his patience. Leonard has gone through hell for his boy, but this is a step too far. “No, absolutely not!” he hollers, and then promptly falls out his bunk in an attempt to climb down the ladder. He hits the floor with a thump, and it’s all he can do to stand, pull together what little dignity there’s still to be found, and growl “Not in my room, you fucking don’t.”

“Crap, Bones!” Jim all but yelps. He’s lost his shirt somewhere between the front door and the bed, and his grin is fast fading into an expression of horror. His companion, for his part, seems unconcerned. The cadet is vaguely familiar, and Leonard wonders if he’s seen him talking to Jim around campus. That must be it.  His curly hair is a mess, and he doesn’t look in the least bit surprised that an angry southern doctor has fallen from the ceiling.

“Evening,” he smiles, extending a hand. “Name’s Garry.”

“Whatever,” Leonard says. “Just… whatever.” He has a sudden need to be anywhere but here, and  it’s only due in part to the scar on Jim’s shoulder, just visible in the dim half-light. He pushes out the door, ignoring Jim’s shout of protest and Garry’s laughter, and staggers out into the hallway.

 

 

When Jim is fifteen and anyone who knows him well (so only Leonard) can still see the pinch to his cheeks that Tarsus left behind, he meets a girl called Tracy Ramos. And promptly falls head over heals. She has piercing green eyes, and parents who are out of town a lot, and Leonard promptly makes himself scarce for a few hours.

It’s something he gets very good at in the years that follow.

He’s always the one there afterwards, though. They disappear out of the door, and Leonard watches as Jim stares at himself in the mirror with eyes that aren’t so fond of what they see.

 

 

As it turns out, leaving the dorm in a hurry wasn’t the smartest idea Leonard has ever had. The door slams shut behind him, and he realises that he’s standing in the corridor wearing nothing but socks, boxer shorts, and a tourist t-shirt proclaiming  _ Boldly Go!  _ that Jim brought him as a joke. He doesn’t have his keys, and he doesn’t have his comm, and like hell is he knocking so they can let him in again.

Fucking fantastic.

He huffs and starts to march towards the stairs. Most of the med students have rooms two buildings over, and he can probably find a couch to crash on. He’s pissed off beyond belief, even before he passes a group of third years who promptly fall over laughing at his attire.

And no, the plate of salted caramel brownies that appears on his desk the next morning is nowhere near enough to appease him.

_ Jim Kirk, you are dead to me. _

 

 

“McCoy report to engineering.”

Scotty’s voice is hitched, rough around the edges. He sniffs, pauses for a moment in un unsuccessful attempt to compare himself.

“Bring- Bring a body bag.”

 

 

_ Finals are,  _ in the language of Christopher Pike, who’s a far worse influence on Jim as his supervisor than Leonard would ever have guessed,  _ a bitch _ . That’s true for any first year, let alone a medic studying advanced battlefield trauma with aspirations to serve upon a constellation class vessel within the next five years. (Well, those are about as far from Leonard’s aspirations as it is possible to be, but if he can’t talk Jim out of going into the damned black deathtrap, he’s going to scrape every qualification necessary to go up there by his side.) By Friday, he’s dead on his feet. The stairs up to their dorm take three times as long to climb as usual, and crying starts to look like a pretty sweet alternative to getting out of bed each morning. In short, Leonard has been steamrollered.

Even he has it easy compared to Jim, though.

Forget condensing the command track into three years, Jim’s taking modules in warp technology and xenolinguistics in the side, and coming the the rapid and horrifying realisation that even the great James Tiberius has his limits.

The nights over San Francisco are never still. An ever present swarm of shuttles fills the skies, and the dim hubbub of life from across the bay leaks in through their windows no matter the hour. But on this particular night, it seems like the world is, if not stationary, then pausing to take a deep breath. Maybe it’s the relative silence that wakes him. Maybe it’s some deeper pull in his gut. But when Leonard cracks one eye open, the bottom bunk is empty. He frowns at the dark room, then carefully slips out of bed.

It doesn’t take long to find the missing cadet. Moonlight, pouring in through a gap in the blinds blends silver streaks into the the uncombed hair. He’s slumped over a table, books and notes (painstakingly written out on real paper) scattered all around. Leonard glances at a sheet, and he can’t begin to understand the mathematical notation scribbled across it in a cramped hand.

_ Christ Jim _ , he thinks fondly.  _ Why do you do this to yourself? _

He’s tempted to wake him up, give him a light tap on the shoulder and drag him to bed. But if he wakes Jim up now, he’ll protest another five minutes of work, and Leonard will be forced to hypo the idiot. It’s not worth the kicked puppy looks that Jim will shoot his way for the next week. Instead, he simply fetches a blanket from where it sits crumpled at the foot of Jim’s unmade bed, and drapes it around his shoulders. Jim’ll be stiff when he wakes but Leonard can give him something for that, and maybe next time he’ll remember to take a bit more care of himself. It’s a futile wish, in truth, but one he wishes nonetheless.

The motions are familiar, and yet somehow utterly alien. He’s draped a blanket around the sleeping shoulders of a child countless times, but Jim is no longer that child. He’s not quite a man either, not yet. It feels as if Leonard is looking at a puzzle, but none of the pieces fit quite right and he doesn’t know what the final shape is supposed to be. 

Because Jim will be great.  _ Amazing _ . If he can survive himself and survive whatever the universe has lying in wait, that is. Three years, Boyce has said, although it’s closer to two now.  _ No _ , Leonard thinks back viciously.  _ Not on my watch. _

There’s something here, something new, and Leonard isn’t sure he wants to pull on that string.

 

 

Jim kisses him at the stroke of midnight, while fireworks explode high above the bay, and Leonard thinks  _ oh, oh, of course.  _

  
  


 

The sun is just beginning to creep over the Golden Gate bridge when Leonard leaves climbs aboard a transport and leaves Jim behind. It’s the first time he’s been further than sprinting distance away from him in almost eleven years, and the only time he has ever done so voluntarily, but Leonard tries not to feel too bad as he eases himself out of the bunk bed with practiced ease. Jim finished his final exam a day ago, and if everything goes to plan he’ll never know he was even gone. Leonard will be back in their dorm and making pancakes by the time Cadet Comatose wakes up. It’s not a long shuttle ride, after all.

He grimaces slightly at the bitter aftertaste of his coffee, brought in a hurry from a street vendor. It leaves a lot to be desired in the flavour department, but he needs the familiar buzz through his veins if he’s going to get through this. Hell, what he really needs is a buzz of an entirely different nature. But drinking himself into oblivion isn’t really an option, unfortunately.

This whole thing is probably a mistake. But he takes his seat none the less, and does his best to ignore the tendrils of doubt coiling in his gut the whole way to Georgia.

They’re next to each other. That’s the worst part of this whole thing, which is really saying something. 

Leonard stands and stares at his headstone, and all he can think is how crappy it is that they buried Jocelyn in the next grave over.

There’s a matching bunch of flowers on each headstone, white lilies beginning to crumple and fade. Jo always did love white lilies. And it’s not like there’s anyone else left who would bother to remember them. He should say something, Leonard’s sure. It’s not everyday you visit your own grave, after all, and it’s never been something he’s wanted to do. Before, (and when did before start meaning before Jim?) he would have considered the whole exercise morbid and all-together pointless. He’s dead. He’s had a lot of time to accept that, and far more useful things to be doing. But in the last year, with every rush of caffeine or nick of a razor that convinces him he’s alive, the thought’s been niggling at the back of his mind. Maybe he’s looking for closure. Maybe he’s just trying to convince himself that before even existed, and Leonard McCoy was once just a simple country doctor.

But whatever he’s trying to find, it’s not here.

_ Leonard Horatio McCoy _ , says the stone.  _ Father and beloved doctor.  _ The only two things he’s ever been any good at, after all.

_ Jocelyn Eve McCoy _ , says the stone. _ Caring wife and devoted mother.  _ He can still feel the kitchen knife, sometimes.

He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes and draws the crisp country air into his lungs. Allows all the anger, all the regret and rage to wash away. And then, madly, he laughs. Throws back his head and roars at the absurdity of it all, the bitter irony and strangling surge of victory.

“I won,” he wheezes eventually, distantly aware that anyone watching would think he was mad. Perhaps they’d be right. He’s not sure he’d be able to tell if he was mad anymore. He’s not sure if he’d care. “You’re in the ground, and here I am. I won, you bitch.”

He looks down at the grass that hides her grave. Smiles. Spits. Then he turns on his heel and walks away. 

Three hours later, he’s brewing coffee as a cadet stumbles out of their room, a stack of pancakes cooling on the table. Jim asks how he knows they’re his favourite, and Leonard smirks as he thinks about a seven year who would steal them from his brother’s plate. It’s easy. It’s good.

Leonard never goes to Georgia again.

 

 

“Hey, Garry,” Leonard sighs. He’s not in the mood to make conversation (although no reasonable person would be at two thirty in the morning), and especially not in the mood to make conversation with Jim’s part-time hook up. Yet here he is, standing squarely between Leonard and the coffee machine. And between a few moments of strained small talk and functioning without caffeine, Leonard knows which is the lesser of two evils. 

“Hi, Doc. Graveyard shift?”

“Yeah. Second year schedule’s a bitch. It’s all I can do not to wake Jim up when I come home most nights.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that. Jimmy’s all worn out.”

Leonard’s fingers tighten around his coffee mug. He’s not sure if it’s the smirk, or the hickey clearly visible on Garry’s collarbone, or the fact that Jim hasn’t been  _ Jimmy _ since… well, this suddenly isn’t a conversation he wants to be having. Especially not with Garry. He’s nice. Charming. Funny. And he rubs Leonard up the wrong way for reasons he isn’t even going to start thinking about.

He grunts and turns to go when Garry grabs his arm. “He was telling me about that research you’re working on. Neural grafting techniques? Sounds fascinating.”

“Gotta write a paper on something,” Leonard shrugs. “You’d probably find it twenty kinds of dull, to be honest. Lot of theoretical biochem. You’re geology, right?”

Garry only smiles. “I like to branch out.”

  
  
  


 

The thing about Philip Boyce is that he doesn’t seem to exist, at least not according to any Starfleet data. Leonard knows this because he’s spent the best part of a year trying to track him down and ask him why the hell his heart suddenly decided to get back to work. He searches the servers, painstaking trawls through every public database he can find, and even has a rummage around some secure ones on the day that Jim left an encryption program running on his PADD.

(Leonard is perfectly happy to pretend he doesn’t know Jim has wiped his own medical files, and Jim is perfectly happy to pretend to believe him.)

But this still leaves him with the fundamental problem of finding Phil. No one at the clinic has heard of him, and by the time the end of the first year runs around and the ever present clock inside his head ticks down to two, Leonard has exhausted all his options.

Well, all except one.

There’s one person at the academy that he knows for a fact is friends with Phil. But there would be no reason for a decorated captain such as Christopher Pike to tell Leonard anything, no matter how much time he may spend clearing up Jim’s messes. Being friends with Jim might actually count against Leonard in trying to wean a favour out of Pike. Especially after the incident in the cafeteria that leaves Jim with a month’s review and Pike with yet another grey hair.  And all that would  be assuming that a first year medical cadet could even engineer a conversation with the academy’s recruitment officer. In short, he isn’t holding his breath on getting to Phil through Pike..

Leonard should know, by now, to never underestimate the Jim Kirk Effect.

In fairness, his life had seen its fair share of weirdness before he ever laid eyes on him. However much he’d like to, even Leonard can’t work out how to blame Jim for his own murder, subsequent resurrection, and eighty year career as an invisible doctor. But proximity to Jim, he has come to realise, means that phrases such as ‘probably not’, ‘unlikely’, and ‘ain’t gonna happen’ lose all meaning.

“Permission to speak freely, Sir?” Leonard asks, wondering if he should have taken the time to change into his cadet reds. Or at least some whites that weren’t covered bodily fluids (of which he could only account for around eight percent.) The comm had come in just as he was checking out from his shift at the clinic, requesting he report to Captain Pike’s office at his earliest convenience. And if Leonard’s first, panicked though had been Jim? Well, he hadn’t bothered with the detour to his room.

“Permission granted.”

“There’s been some mighty screw up. I never filled out these forms, and I sure as hell never even signed up for piloting lessons over the summer.”

Pike doesn’t seem surprised in the slightest. He merely sighs, leans back in his chair, and says “Why don’t you take a seat, McCoy.”

Leonard sits. Pike looks at him like he’s waiting for him to say something, then after a long, painful pause, he sighs again. “Shall we save each other some time and agree to cut the bullcrap? We both know exactly how your name got on those forms.”

He opens his mouth, then closes it again, any half-formed thoughts about covering for Jim’s idiocy evaporating. “He’s not in trouble, is he?”

“If Jim was in trouble, I’d be having this conversation with him right now,” Pike says, expression betraying just how many times Jim’s sat across the desk this year. “You’re aviohobic, correct?”

He should have known that half-baked lie would come back to bite him in the ass. “I… yeah. How do you-?”

“Oh, Jim likes to change the subject when he’s being dressed down.” Pike waves a hand dismissively. “He’s contrary like that. What he isn’t, however, is cruel. An idiot who can speak without thinking, perhaps, an idiot who'll goad people twice his size into a fight for the hell of it, but not needlessly cruel.”

Leonard, who has no idea where this is going, says nothing.

“So why then, would James Kirk sign his aviophobic best friend up for piloting lessons behind his back, if not to hurt him?”

“I don’t know, Sir.”

“I think you do.”

Pike’s gaze is piercing, a single eyebrow quipped as if challenging Leonard to bullshit him, and there’s no question why this man made the captain’s chair. “He wants me up there with him. I can’t serve as a medical officer on a ship if I can’t pilot a shuttle.” 

“And that’s not what you want?”

“I’m an aviophobe, Sir! I have no desire to ever leave this damn planet again.”

The  _ again _ slips out before Leonard can stop it, head too full of an unnaturally blue sky to bite his tongue. And he’s pretty sure that time spent off-planet wasn’t in the identity Phil constructed for him. Leonard’s not so stupid as to think Pike didn’t notice, but the captain doesn't ask. Pike picks up a small model of a ship sitting on his desk, and turns it over in his fingers. 

“Jim wants you up on a ship with him. That much, I’ll give you. But did you ever think that maybe he wants you up there for you?”

Leonard blinks. “Sir?”

“You’ve spent this whole year looking out for him.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“Well maybe Jim’s decided it’s time he looked out for you. Just…” he trails off, setting the model down with a sigh. Leonard wonders if Pike spends his whole life sighing, or just the bits of it he has to spend thinking about Jim. “Just think about it, would you?”

“Yes, Sir,” Leonard manages. He recognises a dismissal when he hears one, and is halfway out the door when Pike says “And McCoy? Don’t think it’s gone unnoticed, what you do for him. If ever there’s anything you need help with…?”

Leonard pauses, and slowly turns around. It’s not what Pike has in mind, that much he’s sure, but there’s most definitely something he needs help with. “Now that you mention it, Sir…”

 

 

“Don’t think it’s gone unnoticed, what you did for him. Your captain.”

Leonard spits a mouthful of blood onto the floor, and prays it leaves a stain.

  
  


 

**To** : PB@uireserch

**From** : lhmccoy@sfa

**Subject** : Cut the crap

You owe me one hell of a fucking explanation. 

 

 

The corridor outside their room is a special kind of chaos, one that Leonard is sure must be reserved for the seventh circle of hell, and the end of term at Starfleet academy. Half packed bags and piles of clothes spill out of dorms, and cadets fall over each other and their possessions trying to move through an accommodation block that might as well have been booby trapped. Leonard skirts around someone’s swivel chair and does his best not to knock open a stack of books left precariously at the top of the stairs, and it’s with relief that he finally squeezes into his room. The only room in the entire building that shows no sign that it’s occupants are about to leave. 

“Crazy out there, huh?” Jim asks, from his spot on the couch where he’s watching football and definitely not packing. 

‘I thought we lived with adults, not disorganised idiots,” Leonard grumbles, collapsing next to him.

“Nah, that’s just the Fleet propaganda. Don’t listen to a word it says about the best and brightest.”

“They let the two of us in, I suppose.”

Jim snorts, and and hands Leonard a beer from the six-pack on the coffee table. He takes it gratefully. “Can’t help noticing you’re not participating in the madness.”

“Huh?”

“You haven’t packed, Jim. The semester ends this morning.”

“Oh, right. I’m not going. Got permission to take a tonne of summer modules that I can use as credit.”

If he had been anyone else, Leonard might have asked why he wasn’t going to see his family over the holidays, and didn’t they miss him. Instead, he only smirks. “You’re really serious about graduating in three years then?”

“Deadly.”

His smile fades, and Leonard takes a swig of beer instead of replying.  _ You’re telling me, kid. Unless I can stop it. _

“It won’t be the same without you around, though.” Jim’s eyes haven’t left the holo, but Leonard isn’t sure he even sees the game. “I might even get a nice roommate. Someone who doesn’t steal all my nice food, or hog the shower, or make me sit through his terrible classic films, or-”

“Jim,” Leonard says slowly. “Do you honestly think I’m going anywhere?” Jim blinks in confusion, and Leonard understands Pike’s constant sighing. “Of course I’ll be rooming with you next year. And you’re stuck with me over summer as well. I’ve got a piloting course to pass.”

There are some things they don’t talk about, for fear of upsetting the balance between them. It’s the reason neither man asks if the other is seeing their family this summer. It’s the reason Jim never asked if Leonard was taking the course, never pushed the issue. And it’s the reason that neither will ever acknowledge the look on Jim’s face, how his pretence of a smile crumples into honest relief.

Any other time, Leonard would tease and poke fun and ask if Jim was planning on being a complete girl from here on out, but he knows that face. Knows what it means for James Kirk to let someone in like this, to drop the bullshit if only for a moment. Instead of laughing at him, he pulls Jim a little closer on the sofa, and allows his head to settle on his chest. 

If only for now, if only for a moment, Leonard allows himself to be selfish. He forgets all Jim must become and the sound of sand running through the hourglass, and doesn’t let go.

 

 

**To** : PB@uireserch

**From:** lhmccoy@sfa

**Subject** : Can we please just talk about this?

You’re going to have to talk to me eventually, Phil. I got your comm from Pike. I’m sure I could get a whole lot more out of him if I persuaded him it was an actual emergency instead of just professional curiosity into your work. And the University of Iowa research department? Of all the places you decide to settle, it’s fucking Iowa? Do you expect me to believe that’s just a happy coincidence? 

 

 

“Don’t be ridiculous,”

“Come on, I promised.”

“JIm-”

“Drinks on me, Bones!” Jim says, pushing the cluster of shots that apparently makes up the next round. “You kicked ass today!”

Leonard reaches for the nearest glass and throws it back without pausing to check what’s in it. He still has no idea, even as it burns its way down his throat and decides it’s better not to ask. “I passed a first year basic qualification that eighteen year olds breeze through in a week.”

“Yeah but a flying one,” Jim argued back. “You flew a shuttle. Do you have any idea how awesome that is?”

What’s awesome, Leonard thinks, must be his acting skills. Jim had ever so kindly informed the instructor about his entirely fictitious aviophobia, leaving him with no choice but to pretend to be a shaky mess for a whole week. At least he didn’t have to fake his utter lack of desire to be on the course with a group of spotty teenagers. 

“It was nothing.” he mumbles. 

“And you did it without hitting anyone!”

Leonard raises an eyebrow. Jim has thrown more than enough punches for the both of them over the years, not that he can call the idiot up on it without blurting out things that he won’t be able to explain how he knows. Instead, he simply drains his glass and says “Well, hitting someone isn’t exactly fitting behaviour for a Fleet officer is it? I’m not going to sit through that bullshit only to be kicked off a ship for poor behaviour.” 

Jim is staring, and Leonard can only smile. “That’s what this was all about, right? Getting me on a damned tincan?” More staring. “I gotta tell you Jim, that’s a little freaky. You gonna say something?”

“Jesus, Bones. You’re amazing.”

Leonard feels the smile freeze on his face. _ Who is he? Jim Kirk?  _

Jim’s the reason he’s doing this all. After all the nights out drinking and times that their eyes meet for that moment too long, Leonard, is here to make sure Jim survives whatever is coming his way in a little under two years time. He has to survive, he has to be amazing, and the responsibility to see it happen has never felt quite so heavy. 

Whatever Leonard may want, however he may feel, it comes second. He has to believe that.

  
  


Leonard is breathing heavily and he can’t see out of his right eye. He’s not sure if it’s been damaged, or if it’s simply the blood streaming down from his temple that obscures his vision. Logically, he probably should be a lot more afraid than he is, but right now, he’s mostly just pissed. He warned Jim that he wouldn’t do well on away teams, and now here he is. Bleeding on the floor in the throne room of a species who aren’t nearly as primitive as the Enterprise’s scanners suggested. 

“This can all be over if you just tell us where we can find your captain,” the alien hisses, and through the muddied spinning of his head, Leonard has decided that it’s some sort of unholy cross between a Klingon and a tabby cat. 

“How about you go screw yourself instead?” he suggests. It seems like a reasonable counter offer.

It earns him another strike to the face, and it’s every bit worth it. 

“You are loyal. Why?”

  
  


 

**To:** PB@uireserch

**From:** lhmccoy@sfa

**Subject:** What. Is. Going. On.

We’re in some deep shit. I get that. So don’t you think that maybe you should be helping me, or at least explaining what the hell is going on, instead of throwing me onto this train and then disappearing off the face of the planet? You got me into this, Phil. This is all your fault, and Christine will back me up on that. She won’t talk to me either, by the way. No-one upstairs will. And I don’t know if that’s because I’ve messed up one too many times, or if it’s because I’ve spent the last year alive and kicking. Because no one will tell me anything. Like why I’m alive and kicking. Or how. 

  
  
  


 

“Are you sure you got those extra ration packs?” Leonard asks, tendrils of the famous San Francisco mist curling around their ankles. Autumn is slowly fading to a sharp winter, and it’s hard to tell what’s fog and what’s the puff of his own breath as they stand outside the humming shuttle bay. Leonard pulls his jacket a little tighter around himself, and curses the uselessness of his clinic whites. Not that they were designed for standing outside at six on a November morning, of course, but that’s exactly where he is. Because someone thought this was a good time for the second year cadets taking advanced survival leave on their first residential assessment.

“In my boots. Where they were ten minutes ago.” Jim rolls his eyes, which are sparkling with more energy than anyone should rightfully have at this godforsaken hour. “Will you relax, Bones? It’s not like we’re going off planet. Hell, we’re not even leaving the continent!”

“And I don’t know if you’ve looked at a weather report, but the Rockies aren’t exactly white beaches either.”

“Aww come on, cheer up.” Jim claps him lightly on the shoulder. “You can manage a week without fussing all over me.”

And that’s exactly what he’s sure he can’t do, not that Leonard will ever tell him. It’s the first time that he’ll be further than a dash across campus away from Jim in years (excluding his impromptu visit to Georgia this summer) and the kid’s galavanting off up mountains in the Canadian winter. 

_Co-dependent,_ Spock will call them one day, and while that doesn’t even come close to describing what Jim has become to Leonard, it’s the word that springs to his mind right now, scolding him in a voice that sounds remarkably like Jocelyn’s.  _ Call yourself an adult _ , she smirks inside his head. _ Pathetic. _

Shut up, he thinks back viciously. She doesn’t get to talk to him like that any more, never mind the fact her voice is a figment of his imagination. Jocelyn doesn’t get to speak to him at all, not after… well, she doesn’t get to talk to him. 

Especially when she’s right.

He doesn’t voice any of this aloud, of course. Leonard simply smirks. “A whole week without your whining. It’s gonna be heaven.”

Jim pouts, and a cadet walking past snorts. Leonard doesn’t know Uhura in any capacity than by (last) name, but as Jim’s pout deepens he decides he likes her. Quite what a xenolinguist is doing on a command assessment he’s not sure. It’s not unusual for cadets to take a smattering of additional modules, especially those with aspirations to amass stripes on their sleeves, but advanced survival is hardly the easiest module to take up. It’s physically gruelling, and requires a different type of genius all together. Leonard would bet good money that she’s the only cadet here wearing a survival uniform whose red stripe doesn’t represent security track, and that she must be 15 pounds lighter than the next.

She’s going to eat them alive. 

The instructor barks a command, and the cadets line up to shuffle single file into the shuttle. Jim pauses behind a curly cadet, and flashes Leonard a grin that’s only fifty percent cocky bullshit. “See you in a week, I guess.”

“Good luck, Kid,” Leonard manages, and watches him practically bounce onto the shuttle. It’s only a week, he reminds himself, and Jim’s still got two years left. He’ll be fine.

(He most decidedly won’t.)

Believe it or not, Jim isn’t his whole life, and for the first three days Leonard tries to make the most of a bit of peace and quiet. He cleans the mountain of mugs that has been steadily growing in their sink. He goes out for drinks with his colleagues after their shift and doesn’t have to check his comm every five minutes. He even sits down and manages to read a whole damn book, cover to cover.

It’s calm. Relaxing. Awful. Somewhere in the last twenty six years or so, Leonard has forgotten how to be anything other than half of Leonard-and-Jim. And isn’t that thought just horrifying. 

Years later, Jim will joke that it was really rather considerate of him to create a distraction to pull Leonard out of his misery. Leonard will smack him.

It starts with a headache. Leonard doesn’t know if he’s capable of getting ill, but he’s certainly done his fair share of feeling like crap between long shifts and being dragged to bars since his return to the land of the living, so at first he doesn’t think anything of it. For the most part of a day, he ignores the pinpricks of pain behind his eyes, and only throws back some painkillers as it gets progressively worse. 

They do nothing.

By the evening, his head is pounding out a military tattoo, and it’s joined by shivers that wrack his entire body. It’s bloody typical, he grouses miserably. His one week off from Jim duty, and his immune system’s decided to fail him. And if there’s a feeling underneath it all, some deep seated unease that something isn’t right, he’d rather crawl under his sheets and feel miserable than address it. It’s something he’ll try not to hate himself for in the weeks that follow.

Leonard wakes at some ungodly time in the middle of the night with shaking hands and a choking panic. He jerks upright in bed, almost hitting his head on the ceiling, and tries to remember how to breathe, hands twisting into the sheets.

Because he knows this fear, recognises the taste cloying on his tongue. It’s not his own.

He hasn’t tried it in a year and a half, doesn’t know if he can even do it since regaining a heartbeat, but Leonard doesn’t even stop to think about it. He closes his eyes, thinks  _ Jim _ , and  _ goes _ .

The first thing that hits him is the cold. Leonard spares a moment to thank God that he started wearing proper pyjamas after the Gary Mitchell Incident, but they do nothing to protect from the ice that bites through the air because, yeah, Canadian Rockies. As far as he can tell, he’s in a cave, but it provides little shelter, and for a moment, he’s too busy shivering to notice the two figures huddled in the far corner.

“You need… moving. Just go…be fine,” one of them whispers, and it’s undeniably Jim. Leonard would recognise the self-sacrificing idiocy anywhere. 

“That’s utter bullshit, Kirk,” the other replies. “You won’t be fine. You’re dying, you dumb hick.”

“Nah,” the laugh is weak, and dissolves into a spluttering cough. “’Tis… but a scratch.”

She shakes her head softly, ponytail bouncing free of her hood. Leonard isn’t sure Uhura understands the reference, but from his position lurking in the shadows, he’s sure that the ghost of a smile inches across her face. She stands. “I’m going to try for a signal again. Don’t move.”

“Where… would I go?” Jim manages.

“Whatever hole you crawled out of to be a raging pain in my ass.”

To say that she stalks out the cave is something of an exaggeration given the icy winds that batter her, but Uhura gets damned close. The moment she’s gone, Leonard lunges over to Jim’s side.

“What the hell did you do, Kid?” he murmurs.

“B’nes?” Jim tilts his head up to look at Leonard. “What you doing here?”

“Saving your dumb ass, that’s what. Look at me.”

Jim obediently peers up at him so that Leonard can shine a light in his eyes. Tries to, at least. His gaze keeps slipping past Leonard’s shoulder and his eyelids droop dangerously.

“What happened?” Leonard tries again, a little softer this time despite the tendrils of panic coiling around his gut. 

“Dunno. Collapsed. Can’t… breathe. ‘M on fire.”

“Shit.”

Jim is as fit as any cadet could hope to be, with stubbornness enough to level any challenge.. There’s no reason whatsoever for him to have collapsed in the middle of a simple training assessment. Not unless there’s something else going on here.

“What have you eaten? Jim, look at me. What have you eaten since you’ve been here?”

He blinks, as if struggling to remember. “Jus’ the rations you gave me. Said… said they were fine.”

“They should have been.” There had been nothing in those bars that should have provoked any sort of allergic reaction, especially one this bad. But here Jim is, fading in front of his and Leonard has no idea what to do. 

“Glad you’re here,” Jim slurs. “Ev’n if you’re not. Really. Whatever.”

“Where else would I be?” Leonard knows that his number one priority should be raising Jim’s core temperature. At least that’s what he tells himself as he allows Jim to crawl further into his arms. The two of them stay there, huddled on the floor of a freezing cave as a storm rages at their door. Leonard does his best not to think of the other cave, the one eleven years and half a galaxy away. Instead he just holds on, and prays to the heaven that slammed shut behind him that Jim will make it through the night.

 

 

“So an ice planet, huh?” Leonard asks with a strained smile.

Jim looks down at his hands folded in his lap, at the three stripes gleaming fresh and new on his sleeves. It’s the first of the mandatory meetings that Fleet regs require them to have every week, which is, well, awesome. “I know. Out of all the places Spock could have marooned me…”

“Bet he did it on purpose.”

“Bones!” Jim admonishes. “He wouldn’t have even known-“

“Sure he would. No way Uhura hasn’t told him.”

“Bones,” Jim says again, but it’s slower this time, and softer as well. Not the voice of the captain (not that Jim’s had time to work on one of those anyway) but the voice of a friend. “After everything that happened, after Vulcan… do you honestly think I could have been any further from Spock’s mind?”

“I suppose not,” he says, suddenly ashamed. This isn’t a good sign, and Leonard’s starting to suspect that him being CMO is going to be a disaster. Because he has a crew of over six hundred people to think about now, not just Jim. There’s no way this won’t be a conflict of interests. 

And there’s no way he’s letting him go out there on his own.

 

 

Leonard opens his eyes with his face pressed into scratchy sheets and his fingers curling around empty air. For a moment, in that half second between waking and sleeping, he can’t quite remember what’s wrong. Then the grey light of morning comes crashing in, and he sits bolt upright (almost hitting his head on the ceiling, this damned bunkbed) with two revelations.

Firstly, he is in his dorm. His dorm in San Francisco, and definitely not a cave in the Rockies where he fell asleep.

And secondly, he feels fine. 

The headache, the fever, the fatigue that has wracked his body for the last two days are gone. He takes a deep, experimental breath and feels no sudden bursts of pain. He is… he’s fine.

And Leonard isn’t sure what to make of that.

He makes himself a cup of the strongest coffee they have (the stuff he hides from Jim and reserves for emergencies) and sits on the couch. He laces his finger through the handle, not caring that the too-thin china burns his fingers, nor that he’s probably late for his shift. Shouts and laughs and the slams of doors filter in through the window, a thousand tiny sounds that add up to an academy coming alive for another day, and Leonard lets it all wash over him. It’s easier than thinking about what the hell happened last night.

Jim in that cave. Ill. Afraid. And somehow, impossibly, Leonard had known. 

Tentatively, he puts a hand against his own chest, and feels the unmistakable thud of a heartbeat. He’s alive, no question, and every inch a normal boring human, albeit one with some unusual life experiences. Except apparently he’s not. Not where Jim is concerned, at least.

Leonard sets his mug down, closes his eyes and thinks  _ Jim _ . Focuses on the lightning-blue shard of soul he’s always been able to recognise. Nothing. He’s still sitting on the sofa, and nothing moves in the dorm room.

It would look, to a casual observer, that nothing was wrong at all.

Leonard doesn’t sleep until the expedition returns to the academy three days later. 

Uhura walks out of the shuttle just before Jim, and the look she gives him over her shoulder is nothing but her usual disdain. He smirks back, she stalks off, and across the hanger, Leonard wonders for the millionth time if he dreamed the whole thing. But no, there’s a weariness to Jim’s face that hadn’t been there a week ago, and a slump to his shoulders that even the most casual observed couldn’t miss. But the smile when he see’s Leonard is genuine.

It falters a moment later when notices the two men standing next to him

“Oh no.”

“Oh yes.” Pike says.

“Who told you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Leonard replies quickly. “You, my friend, are going to for a full checkup. Right now.”

Geoffrey M’Benga steps forward with a smile that suggests he’s not in the least bit in the mood for any of Jim’s bullshit. Jim glances at the three men and seems to realise that between them, he has no chance of getting out of this. 

“I hate you all.” He declares. “So much.”

“Hate you too, kid.” Leonard says, and then surprises himself as much as anyone by hugging him. “Well done for not dying completely.” He murmurs into the blonde hair. “Did you at least pass the stupid simulation?”

“Top marks.” And if Jim lets himself be dragged away by M’Benga with fractionally less protesting than usual after that, Leonard doesn’t let himself think about it for too long.

He and Pike sit in silence in the waiting room of the clinic. It’s a toss up which one of them is more uncomfortable, but it’s Pike who clears his throat and breaks the silence first.

“Any luck contacting Doctor Boyce for your research inquiries?”

“Not so much, no.”

A smirk plays at the corner of Pike’s mouth. “That doesn’t surprise me. I did warn you it was a long shot. Phil’s not the most sociable of people, shall we say.”

Leonard thinks about the comfortable ease that Phil and Pike had shown around each other at the bar in Riverside, and he’s tempted to ask just how well the captain knew him, or just how much Phil had shared about his past. But something tells him that it would be pushing the boundaries of their sort-of acquaintance a little too far, not to mention the boundaries of the ten or so ranks that separate them. Instead, he hums an affirmative, and neither man speaks again until M’Benga calls them into his office.

“I’ve given Kirk a light sedative to give his body a chance to cover from mild hypothermia and dehydration. You should be able to take him home in a couple of hours.”

“Lucky me,” Leonard says with an exaggerated groan, but Pike early frowns.

“There’s something else. What?”

M’Benga glances at the door, as if worried someone will walk through at any moment, and when he replies his voice is hushed. “You said the expedition leader contacted you to let you know he’d suffered from an allergic reaction,” he says, and Leonard nods, hoping the explanation doesn’t sound as flimsy to Pike than it does to him. “I’ve run a few blood tests, and I couldn’t find any sign of anaphylaxis. What I did find was small traces of triposilin.”

“Triposilin?”

“Thats… that’s a toxin, isn’t it?” Pike asks.

Leonard does nothing to disguise the thunder in his voice. “A damn nasty one at that. My God.”

“I’ve kept my findings to myself so far. I haven’t reported it. I haven’t even told Kirk.”

“And why the hell not?” Pike rounds on him. “If this is what it looks like, and there’s someone out there trying to sabotage Jim’s career-“

“Hell, his life!” Leonard adds.

“-Then we need to find out what happened. The Fleet authorities-“

“In my experience,” M’Benga says, his voice soft, “The Fleet authorities don’t always have the individual’s best interests at heart. There’s just as much a chance that they’ll try to cover it up, if this really is an attack on Kirk, and even if they don’t then the official procedures will put him through hell. He’s been through enough.”

Leonard opens his mouth to argue, to demand just who this doctor thinks he is that he knows Jim better than them when there’s someone trying to kill him, goddammit, but the words freeze in his throat. Because helplessness and a strange determination are vying for position on M’Benga’s face, and recollection hits him like a tonne of bricks. And suddenly, Leonard remembers him. 

“Okay,” he says softly.

“What? You can’t possibly think this is a good idea?” Pike demands. “Kirk’s been attacked-“

“And we’d better work out who by. M’Benga’s right. The system has never done a damn thing for Jim.”

 

 

Jimmy doesn’t speak, no matter what questions the well meaning medical team ask him. He neither rejects nor encourages their treatment, and he hardly seems to notice when the doctor who is supposed to be supervising his dermal regeneration bolts out the door to throw up. Abstractly, Leonard can’t blame the man. The sight of Jimmy’s back and those awful words burned into his skin is enough to make even the most seasoned professional balk. 

Jimmy is sitting hunched over on the biobed, and Leonard wills those blue eyes to do anything other than stare blankly ahead. He’s so busy wondering if either of them truly made it out of that room with the drain in one corner that he barely registers the man who picks up the regenerator. He must be a junior doctor, years younger than his boss and with far less experience, but when he raises the instrument, Geoffrey M’Benga’s hands are steady.

 

 

“Heya, Bones,”

Jim smiles wearily from his bed. He looks just as tired as he had in the hanger and the purple rings under his eyes are no less pronounced, but all Leonard can think is that at least his lips aren’t that horrible blue colour they’d been in the cave.

“I just spoke to M’Benga.” He says, taking a seat. “Tough luck.”

“A week!” Jim complains. “A whole week until they’ll discharge me! This is ridiculous! I feel absolutely fine.”

“Well you look like shit. Why don’t you surprise us all and take the advice of not one but two medical professionals for a change?” And keep yourself safely in hospital and out of danger while you’re at it, he adds silently.

Jim eyes him curiously. “You think the other doctors here are terrible.”

“Only most of them. M’Benga’s your primary physician. And he knows what he’s talking about.”

“You know, you’ve never asked me why I haven’t made you my primary physician.”

Leonard shrugs. “You’re my friend. Conflict of interests and all that.”

“That’s never stopped you treating me before.”

“Well, you do insist on almost getting yourself killed three times a week. I’m pretty sure I took an oath about that somewhere down the line.”

Jim smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. In fact he looks downright uncomfortable, twisting the bedsheets tightly into fists. If it were anyone else, Leonard might use the word nervous, but he’s pretty sure that’s not in Jim’s dictionary, and definitely not around him.

“My primary physician gets full access to my medical history,” Jim says, resolutely looking anywhere but Leonard’s face. “Full access. And Bones, there’s some stuff I haven’t told you, and-“

“We don’t have to talk about it.” Leonard says quickly, because he suddenly has a horrible feeling that he knows where this is going. 

“No.” Jim says firmly. “We do. You’ve always been there for me, and, well. If you’d have me, I’d really like you to take over my medical treatment once I get out of here. Practice for when we get into space, and all.”

If things had been different, Leonard might have made a joke. Told Jim he must be mad if he thought Leonard wanted to be responsible for his reckless ass, or tell him that he should be down on one knee if he wants to make proposals like that. As it is, it’s all Leonard can do to stare as Jim pulls a PADD from under his pillow and holds it out. A PADD that can only contain the medical records of James T. Kirk, survivor of child abuse and Tarsus IV.

With every second that Leonard doesn’t move to take it, Jim’s face becomes a little more desperate. It’s only when he says “Please, Bones,” in a voice that’s never quite sounded so vulnerable, that there’s nothing for Leonard to do but nod numbly. He accepts the offered PADD, and tries his hardest not to look like he wants to dash the machine against the walls.

“Okay.”

“Just do me a favour and don’t read it in front of me.There’s some stuff on there and after you might not… I don’t want to watch that.”

“Hey, Jim?” Leonard stands to leave. “What’s brought this on?’

“A guy can’t request the best doctor he knows after he nearly dies?” Jim tries, but they both know that this is about so much more than medical treatment and the joke falls flat. He flounders for a moment before simply saying “In that cave. I dreamed about you.”

Leonard stares at him for a moment before leaving without another word, the piece of Jim cradled carefully in his hands.

 

 

“I had the weirdest dream about us last night,” The captain smiles. They’re sitting in the cafeteria, feet not quite touching under the table.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. You were old and grumpy and sitting in a rocking chair, and I was old and still dashing handsome.”

“I doubt that.”

“No, really! The grey hair made me look very distinguished. I make a sexy grandpa, I’ll have you know.”

A passing ensign singers, and Leonard wonders for the millionth time just why he puts up with Jim. “And so what were the grumpy old guy and the questionably handsome old guy doing?”

Jim shrugs, stabbing at something that most definitely isn’t good for him on his plate. “Nothing much. Taking. Chasing stupid teenagers off our lawn with walking sticks and phaser cannons.”

Leonard almost chokes on his water. “Our lawn?”

“Sure.” Jim smiles warmly at him. “And then Admiral Archer was there, but he was a penguin and he wanted us to sing karaoke, except there wasn’t any music, and-“

He recognises the tease in Jim’s voice, the change of subject he’s offering and he’s grateful for it. “You,” Leonard punctuates his words by waving his fork threateningly, “Are an idiot.”

 

 

He doesn’t go back to the hospital until late that night. Jim will probably be expecting him to take some time to process the fact that his best friend lived through one of the greatest massacres in federation history, but Leonard doesn’t have to fake the delay. It doesn’t matter that he already knew first hand what Jim had been through. In fact, it would probably be easier if this had been a complete surprise, because then Leonard would only have to read the official medical report, impersonal and lacking in detail. He wouldn’t have to smell the acrid stench of burning flesh, nor watch Jim scream over a grave that’s far too small. He would be able to read phrases like  _ probable torture _ and  _ uncooperative recovery _ without comming close to understanding what they really mean.

He wouldn’t know how huge a thing it is for Jim to share this with him.

And Leonard isn’t quite sure how to deal with that.

He pushes the door to the private room open a little before midnight. Leonard half expects Jim to be asleep, or at least faking it, but he sits up as soon as he comes in. For a long moment they simply look at each other.

“I thought maybe you weren’t coming back.” Jim says, and it’s obvious how much even that small admission costs him. “You read it?”

“Yeah.”

More silence. Then Leonard sits down. Not in the plastic visitor chair, but on the bed. He places the PADD on the side table, deliberately out of Jim’s line of sight. “Tell me about it.”

And Jim does.

He talks about the well-meaning social worker, and how for the first few months Tarsus was everything he’d dreamed it would be. He was able to take courses in advanced computer technology and mathematics once it became apparent that school was far too easy, and at night the unpolluted sky was alive with stars. He talks about the growing unrest as the crops started to fail, and how everyone had faith that the government would find a solution right up until the day Kudos ordered the purges. A lot of what he talks about, Leonard already knows. The running. The kids who didn’t make it. How Jim would give anything to trade places with them. Some of it is new to him. The fact that Jim kept a phaser not for use on the guards, but because he wouldn’t let his kids be captured. A shot for each of them, and none left over for the boy who would have to live with it forever.

He doesn’t mention the room with the drain in one corner.

Tendrils of light are creeping in through the window by the time Jim finishes. A new day dawning over San Francisco. 

“So?” Jim asks.

“So?” 

“If you want to go… or if you want me to move out when I’m discharged…” It’s a hollow smile. “Most people wouldn’t want to live with someone broken.”

_ Who is he? Jim Kirk? He’s broken. No, he’s amazing. _

“Do I look like most people to you?” Leonard asks. Slowly, deliberately, he leans forward and wraps his arms around Jim. His hand hovers over the the scar on his shoulder that he knows lies hidden below the hospital gown, and something inside him snaps. Leonard buries his face in the crook of his neck, and he’s not exactly when he starts crying. Yet, when the nurse comes in with Jim’s morning medication, Leonard knows two things with absolute clarity. That he will find whoever tried to take Jim away from him, and they will not survive this.

  
  


 

**To:** PB@uireserch

**From:** lhmccoy

**Subject:** Please

It’s Jim, isn’t it? Whatever bullshit is going on, whatever mess you’ve thrown me into, it’s got everything to do with Jim. I need you to help me here. I need you to help me work out how to help him. Please.

  
  


 

He packs his whole life into a navy duffle bag on a cloudy San Francisco afternoon, everything he is neatly folded in condensed stacks and thrown over his shoulder. His mind is too full of distress signal and really going up there and will they let Jim fly to notice that the name Leonard McCoy is still printed in a neat hand on one side.

He packs his whole life up into a navy duffle bag when the sun is shining and nothing will even be remotely fine ever again. They’re going to miss the funeral, and the fact that Jim hasn’t even kicked up a fuss about that shows just how far from okay he is. The name Leonard McCoy is little more but a faint smudge of ink.

He stares at his whole life, packaged far too small in a black bag, and outside the window the empty expanse of space is the same shade. Phil was wrong, but Sam had been right all along, and Leonard pushes it all away. He needs to find a pen, and the strength of will to write the name James Kirk.

 

 

They don’t talk about that night. Jim spends the next few days eyeing him nervously, as if he’s sure Leonard will walk out the door mid sentence and abandon him, and Leonard tries not to take it personally. There’s never been anyone in his life who didn’t leave, no one he really cares about at least, and it’s perfectly understandable that Jim’s going to be on edge for a while. Leonard wants to reassure him more than anything, to promise Jim he won’t be a repeat performance of the rest of his family. 

What he can do, however, is throw a clipboard at his face three days after Jim told him about Tarsus. Jim, of course, catches it with ease, and Leonard wonders how much longer he and M’Benga can keep him safe in hospital under the pretence of monitoring his illness. 

“What’s this?”

“The forms to transfer you to my primary care. Don’t worry, I know we might as well add paperwork to your list of allergies so I got M’Benga to help me with most of it. Just needs your signature.”

“Seriously?”

“Practice for when we get into space and all, right.”

A small smile plays at the corner of Jim’s mouth as he starts to flip through the forms. “Right.”

Jim gets a steady stream of visitors over the course of the week. Various command cadets appear to drop of lecture notes and the coursework he insists on keeping up with, and Pike is in his room more than is strictly necessary for an academic advisor. Just to make sure he’s not falling behind, of course,  and definitely not to make sure that no more Triposilin makes its way into Jim’s breakfast waffles. Leonard is probably equally as paranoid when it comes to playing guard dog, but it’s Uhura’s visit that takes him by surprise.

She pokes her head around the door with a tentative knock one evening, a box of jam donuts clutched in her free hand. Leonard glances up from his usual spot by Jim’s bed where he’s steadily ploughing through his homework.

“Is this a good time?” she asks.

“Well, he’s unconscious,” Leonard nods towards Jim, fast asleep on his bed, “So it’s probably the best time as far as you’re concerned.”

That earns him a surprised laugh. “You got me there. I just wanted to make sure that the idiot hasn't gotten himself killed in the process of screwing up my grades.”

“You got the second highest score, didn’t you?”

“Exactly.” She shrugs, then gestures to the box. “He doesn’t like these, right?”

“Right.”

“Perfect.”

“I’m telling him you dropped by.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“Oh yeah, definitely telling.”

Her frown melts into a reluctant smile, and Uhura is fast becoming one of his favourite people. “Well, when he stops drooling could you please tell him that he did a good job out there, and that if he tries to sneak into the linguistics club tonight I’ll put him back in the hospital?”

“Sure thing.” She turns to to, and Leonard says “Hey, Uhura? Thank you. For what you did for Jim on that expedition. I don't think he’d have made it without you.”

“Don’t mention it. And please, call me Nyota.”

He’s helpless to stop the slow grin spreading across his face. “Oh, this is going to drive you insane,” he tells Jim, who has just begun to snore.

“I’m counting on it. But really, I only did what any good Starfleet officer would do. And Mitchell’s the one who hiked five miles to get medical supplies from the closest waypoint.”

The smile freezes on Leonard’s face. “Mitchell?”

“Yeah, Garry Mitchell. Science track? Think he and Kirk had a thing a while back?”

“I didn’t know he was on that training course.”

She shrugs. “Yeah well, he did as much as I did to make sure Kirk got back in one piece. See you around, Doctor.”

She leaves, the door swinging shut behind her, and Leonard sits back down, mid racing. The cadets on the expedition had been mostly command and security tracks, and only a handful getting on the shuttle had had the telltale blue stripes on their survival uniform. None of them had been Gary Mitchell. Leonard’s sure of that. Maybe he’d arrived late, or beamed directly to the base camp, or-

Or maybe there’s something else going on entirely. Leonard thinks of the way that Garry had seemed familiar all those months ago. And he swears out loud. Good God, he’s been a fucking idiot.

 

 

Leonard’s never had any reason to step foot in the applied sciences building that houses the geology labs, and it’s as uninspiring as he imagines the subject to be. He’s not here to admire the beige walls, though. His footsteps echo through the empty building, unsurprising as no one in their right mind would be here on a Saturday night.

Well, one person is.

Garry Mitchell looks up as Leonard enters, pipette hovering over some space rock or other. “Leonard, hi! What are you doing here? How’s Jim? Sorry I haven't gotten around to visiting him, I’ve got this experiment running that requires constant supervision and-“

“Cut the crap, Garry.” Leonard is not even slightly in the mood to play this game. “You can drop the shinny cadet act about now.”

Garry puts down the pipette, cocking his head in almost comic confusion. “I’m sorry?”

“I was sure I knew you from somewhere. Riverside Shipyard, right? That was you. It shouldn’t have taken me so long to piece it together.”

A pause. And then “Christine always spoke so highly of you. Leonard this. Leonard that. The avenging angel of Tarsus IV. You’re kind of disappointing in person. Or maybe I should just be offended that I left such a fleeting impression?”

“I was kind of preoccupied.” Leonard should have known the moment he saw Garry, but between meeting Jim and developing a heartbeat he’d been a bit too busy to pay much attention to pay attention to the curly haired angel who’d tried to stand in his way. “I’d say that you’d grown a backbone since then, but then poisoning someone isn’t what I’d call a daring move.”

Garry’s easy smile morphs into something of a grimace. “It worked though, didn’t it?”

“Not really, no. You didn’t kill him, asshole. Jim’s gonna be just fine.”

“Yeah, but I got to see you in action, didn’t I? And I have to say I’m impressed. This was never about killing Jimmy.”

“Don’t call him that.” Leonard snaps automatically. 

“What? Jimmy? Jealous are we?” Garry leans forward, his smile every inch the lear. “Ooh, you do care. Does it bother you that I’m the one he’s fucking? Or maybe it just reminds you of the little kid you’ve suddenly got the hots for.”

“You don’t know a damned thing.”

“It  _ does _ .” It might as well be Christmas for all Garry’s eyes sparkle with glee. “You know, the way they talk about you upstairs, they’re all terrified. But really, you’re just kind of pathetic, aren’t you?”

Leonard wants to punch him, to hold him down and hit until Garry stops twitching. But there are more important things at stake here. “Why are they scared of me?” He demands. “What are they saying up there?”

“Sorry, Doc. You’re out of the loop, remember? Let the big boys fix the mess you boys have made and go back to your ridiculous pining.”

“There’s a reason they’re scared of me,” Leonard bluffs. “If I have the power to turn whatever they’ve got planned on it’s head-“

“You’ve got jack shit.” Garry leers. “There’s a storm coming like you couldn’t imagine, and you’re nothing but a washed up corpse with a bit of left over juice. I’m just here out of a professional curiosity. And, well, little Jimmy’s not a bad squeeze. When this is all over, I might keep him. But crap, I forgot.” He smacks his forehead in mock frustration. “He isn’t going to survive this, is he? Shame.”

This time, Leonard really does punch him. Or at least tries to. His fist passes through empty air and Garry is laughing from the other side of the lab as Leonard almost falls over from the momentum. “Like I said. Pathetic. I wish I could say we’ll keep in touch, but honestly? I’ve got bigger things to be getting on with.”

“Wait!” Leonard starts, but Garry’s already gone. 

Throwing the stupid space rocks against the wall doesn’t help. 

 

 

Pike’s pacing, something that Leonard is trying and failing not to find hilarious. He all but flies around the office as he gestures distractedly for Leonard to take a seat.

“Kirk’s getting out of hospital tomorrow, and I really think we need to alert the admiralty about this. There’s no way we can keep him safe just between the three of us, and-“

“Sir,” Leonard interrupts. “I don’t think we’re going to have a problem with the person who poisoned Jim any more.”

Pike stops mid stride. “I’m sorry?”

“Would you trust me if I said it was taken care of, and it’s probably better if you don’t know the details?”

A pause. And then “You’re sure?”

“Positive, Sir. They won’t be giving Jim any more trouble.”

Pike’s face is unreadable. He crosses the room to sit at his desk and lets out a trademarked sigh. “Cadet McCoy, you’re aware that they’re giving me the Enterprise, yes?”

“Yes sir.” Leonard doubts there’s a member of Starfleet that cares less about the physical fleet of ships than he does, but even he’s slightly in awe of their new flagship. Jim for his part, has been known to sit and drool over the blueprints for hours on end.

“She’ll be ready for launch in a little under two years, if the engineers stop breaking things. I’d be obliged if you could keep yourself and Kirk in one piece long enough to be there?”

Leonard’s no expert, but he thinks he’s just been offered a job. “Yes, Sir.”

 

 

“He’ll kill you, you know that.”

“Your survival is unlikely,”

“Captain, we gain nothing by diplomacy. Going over to that ship is a mistake.”

“I, too, agree. You should rethink your strategy.”

Jim and Spock are talking over each other, but Leonard only watches Captain Pike. He doesn’t say a word as they shout, only listens with a distant expression in his eye. Pike looks around the bridge of his brand new ship, one hand trailing to brush against the captain’s chair he’s barely sat in, and Leonard knows with a harrowing certainty what he’s about to do.

“I know,” he says.

  
  
  


It’s five minutes to midnight, and Leonard just wants to go to bed. The wind coming off the dark bay is sharp and spray-filled, and the leather jacket he wears for old time’s sakes isn’t nearly enough to stave off the cold. It’s better than their first New Year at the academy at least, when he’d gotten outrageously drunk just to prove to himself that he could now. Neither he nor Jim had noticed midnight pass as they sat in the bathroom taking turns to throw up

The academy hosts a New Year's party every year, and he can see the logic in it. Better that the cadets make drunk idiots of themselves on campus rather than at every bar in the city, but that doesn’t mean Leonard has to enjoy it. He’s been on edge ever since Jim got out of hospital, and knowing that Garry isn’t coming back doesn’t help in the slightest. Crowds only stress him out even more, and this drunk, heaving mass of people pressing all around is enough to make him want to run for his dorm. 

“Hey, Bones! Over here!”

Jim has somehow managed to snag a spot on the terrace that overlooks the water, a little away from the worst of the party, and Leonard follows his voice over there gratefully. And he only falls over one set of flailing limbs on the way, which is something of an achievement. There’s a bottle of beer in Jim’s hand, but it looks as if he’s been nursing it for a while. 

“There’s gonna be fireworks,” Jim says, gesturing vaguely across the bay. 

“I thought the academy cancelled that?” An announcement that the pyrotechnics had been cancelled due to irresponsible behaviour (read: idiots trying to break into the storeroom and hook the fuses up to their own controls) had been met with disappointment across the whole academy.

“Yeah, they did.” Jim grins. “But some engineering guys have been setting up their own display for weeks. It’s a total secret though, so you didn’t hear that from me.”

“And do I want to know how you know?”

Jim only smiles and raises his drink to his lips, which Leonard supposes is all the answer he needs. There’s yet to be a major stunt pulled on campus that Jim hasn’t had some hand in.

It’s been… well, not easy as such, since Jim got out of hospital. True, they’ve fallen back into the familiar rhythm of cheerful insults and classwork and pancakes on Sunday mornings, and it’s almost as if nothing has changed. But then there’s the looks Jim sometimes shoots him when he thinks Leonard’s not looking, as if he’s a puzzle Jim just can’t crack, and the sense of something giving way between them. Leonard’s trying not to think about it too hard. That’s a pandora’s box he does not want to open, and not just because Garry’s voice has a habit of echoing through his head at night. Jim is his friend, his patient, his ward and his responsibility. It’s enough, and if he tells himself that often enough, he might even believe it. 

‘Fleet to Bones? You with us?”

Leonard realises that Jim’s staring at him, and he coughs abruptly, turning away from the bay he’s been idly staring over. “Yeah, sorry. Just thinking.”

“Me too,” Jim says. “Thinking, I mean. Done lots of that recently and I… well, they way you… with the hospital and…”

Jim’s tripping over his words, something Leonard’s never witnessed before. Even when he’s drunk out of his minds, the kid carries on talking, even if the words don’t all come out in the right order. He’s twitchy and skittish, and Leonard has no idea where this is going.

“Jim, what’s going on?”

“The thing is-“

He’s interrupted by the shouts that rise from the crowd, the final countdown to a new year. The cadets around them count down in drunken shouts, and Jim takes the opportunity to back the rest of his drink in a single, jerking motion.

“Three, two, one-“ 

The bay explodes with light. Leonard can think of no other word for it. Fireworks of blue, red and gold fill every inch of the sky, the colours reflected in the water as they glitter down to earth. How the engineering cadets managed to pull this off, he has no idea, but Leonard thinks that if he were a captain, he’d track down anyone involved and offer them a job on the spot. He turns to say this to Jim, laughter bubbling up in his throat, and over the cheers and booms of fireworks, he can just hear Jim whisper “Fuck it.”

And that’s all the warning Leonard has before Jim tugs him forward by the front of his shirt and suddenly they’re kissing. 

The world falls away. Leonard is abstractly aware of the party moving around them and the colours that continue to fill the world, but none of that matters. All he knows is lips that taste of beer and, for some reason, ginger biscuits, and the heat that radiates off him as he tangles his hand into Leonards shirt as if hanging on for dear life. His own fingers find Jim’s cheek of their own accord, and it’s frantic, overwhelming, amazing-

_ Who is he? Jim Kirk? He’s amazing.  _

_ Jimmy, what are we going to do _ and  _ should have followed that car over the cliff  _ and  _ three years time _ and  _ jealous, are we? _ and Leonard wrenches away, heart pounding a military tattoo. Jim’s eyes hold a desperate question, and Leonard wonders if he’s ever hated himself more than he has in this moment. 

“Jim, I… I gotta… I’m sorry.”

He walks away without another word, allowing the throng of people to swallow him. Jim’s expression as he turned is enough shatter his old heart into a mess of ugly shards.

 

 

“Landing’s easy,” Jim says, as San Francisco appears in the shuttle window. Leonard isn’t sure it’s any different from falling.   
  


 

They don’t talk about the kiss.

Not the next morning. Not ever.

Three days later, Jim fails the Kobayashi Maru for the first time.


End file.
